Sun Valley Community School alum Noelle LaFleur is about to graduate from Santa Clara University with a degree in marketing. But she could just as easily forge a career for herself that embraces her passion for food.

As a youngster, LaFleur capped ski days by watching Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa and other cooking shows on the Food Network, even pretending to host her own cooking shows in the family kitchen. She based her senior project on how restaurants build community in Sun Valley, looking in particular at the Mason family kitchens, including the Ketchum Grill, Enoteca and her favorite—Town Square Tavern.

And she spent a summer at Ecole Ducasse cooking school in Paris.

“I love to read recipes but I don’t follow them,” she said. “I use them as inspiration to create my own recipes.”

This Beet and Goat Cheese Starter, or appetizer, is a recipe she created for an exam in in culinary School:

BEET & GOAT CHEESE STARTER

1 medium beet, red or golden

2 tablespoons crème fraiche

4 oz. goat cheese

½ to ¾ cup chicken stock

1 tablespoon cold butter

1 tablespoon chopped pistachio nuts

2 pinches of salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Wrap a whole beet in tin foil; place in a baking dish and bake for an hour until the beet is fork tender. Slice the beet into ½ cm. wide rounds then cut those in half. There’s no need to peel the beets.

Add ½ cup of chicken stock to a frying pan on high heat and cook until the stock has been reduced by half. Add the beet halves to the stock. Remove the stock and beets from the heat and add a pinch of salt and cold butter. Shake the pan vigorously to emulsify the glaze and coat the beets in the sauce.

To make the goat cheese mixture, mix the crème fraiche and goat cheese in a bowl and add small pinch of salt. Place the goat cheese mixture on the plate, followed by a few pieces of the beet. Add a few drops of the pan sauce to the plate, followed by a sprinkle of chopped pistachios.