http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/living/food/story/657672.html



Rahman "Rock" Harper doesn't look like he has been to hell and back, but he has.

He is Season Three's winner of "Hell's Kitchen," and a man whose confidence might border on arrogance if he weren't such a nice guy.

However, the 31-year-old chef whose mettle was enough to dazzle Gordon Ramsay - the television host and chef extraordinaire who has caused grown men to cry - said confidence is key in being a great chef.



"It was my competition to lose," said Harper, who won $250,000 and was head chef of Terra Verde Green Valley Ranch Resort in Henderson, Nev. "Nobody ever believed in themselves like I believed in myself. If you believe in something, it can be."

As a child growing up in Virginia, he began believing in his ability to cook early on.

He was a quick start in the kitchen because he realized his stomach benefited from doing so.

"I would watch my mother and grandmother cook, and I would be in there asking questions," said Harper as he sat in the lobby of the Marina Inn at Grande Dunes in Myrtle Beach. "It was being interested and being hungry, and my mother worked a lot so I thought it made sense to learn how to cook for myself."

He believes every cook should not be without salt, garlic, onions, fresh peppercorns and a grinder.

He recommends that chicken be marinated before frying. He uses oil, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and garlic.

"I don't use salt because I don't want it to dry out the meat," said Harper, a national celebrity spokesman for the March of Dimes who will leave town today after helping with fundraisers and other events for the Pee Dee March of Dimes Chapter, which includes Myrtle Beach and Georgetown County.

He said it is imperative to place the chicken in cold water before flouring it and placing it in the oil, which should always be clean because it makes for the crispiest chicken that is not oily.

He appreciates cuisines from around the world, but his greatest love is Southern and mid-Atlantic cuisine or simply American comfort food.

"I enjoy cooking the things we all like to eat, and the food we have grown to love," said Harper, who worked at B. Smith's Restaurant in Washington, D.C., from 1999 to 2007. "You look at the certain dishes that your mother and grandmother made, and the dishes that have been around because we have all borrowed so much from around the world."

Harper declares that everything he cooks is good, but if he had to just pick one thing he does better than anything else, it would be his crab cakes.

"I start off with a good, flavorful crabmeat," said Harper, who admits he hasn't yet mastered grilling. "I use lots of crab and not much cake. I just hate it when you eat a crab cake and all you get is bread crumbs. Crab cakes should be mostly crabmeat."

To make his extra special, he uses honey, pureed shrimp and Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce. The use of eggs, mustard and Old Bay seasoning in crab cakes is standard, he said.

He admits that he borrows from other chefs and that confident chefs don't mind sharing their secrets with competitors.

"Chefs will tell me, 'I remember when you took my recipe,'" Harper said. "But I have a couple of tricks up my sleeve, and a recipe isn't going to make or break my career."