The Proof is in the Pasta

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Marc Vetri hustled the kids as they ambled in for their last cooking class yesterday at the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Culinary Literacy Center. As they slung down their backpacks and jackets, the spirit of competition permeated the room – the 18 students from Building 21 would put their cooking skills to the test to impress a panel of judges in the Final Throw Down.

There was no introduction and not a recipe in sight; the three teams got to work right away, preparing an appetizer and main dish they had conceptualized with one of the overseeing chefs last week. Carla Norelli, Vetri Program Manager, Joan Jablonoski, Vetri Program Coordinator, and Chef Marc Vetri helped facilitate each team of six.

This was the last class of a semester-long program for 18 freshmen at the new Building 21 high school. The summer before the school opened in 2014, the Vetri Foundation for Children developed a culinary arts curriculum for the school, including a class taught weekly by Marc Vetri. In addition to practicing general cooking skills, the students learned how to butcher a whole lamb and make pasta from scratch, and were taught the importance of utilizing locally grown produce.

Clearly, the students had learned a lot; their confidence was evident.

Kevin, on Norelli’s team, seasoned ground beef, added cheese, and formed it into small patties. “Then, when you bite into it, it’ll be all cheesy on the inside,” he told me, his eyes widening in anticipation.

Jablonoski’s team member Anass expertly chopped onions with ease, his left hand in the proper ‘bear claw’ position to protect his fingertips. He said he helps with cooking at home, and plans to make the fettuccini alfredo recipe he learned in the class for his family.

Other students worked expertly with the pasta making attachment on the KitchenAid – rolling out the dough, flouring it and pushing it through the roller slowly and evenly. The whole class had gotten a lesson in pasta the week before from the maestro himself, Marc Vetri, and were excited to incorporate it into their competition dishes.

As the dishes came together, the judges – Jeff Benjamin (co-founder of the Vetri Foundation), Hillary Van Anda (Building 21 science teacher), Tara Ranzy (Building 21 principal), and Liz Fitzgerald (Culinary Literacy Center specialist) – took their seats. They would evaluate each dish on taste, appearance/presentation, creativity, and professionalism.

Jablonoski’s team served first. The kids placed plates of buffalo chicken wontons with avocado sauce and scallions, homemade fettuccine with shrimp and scallop marinara sauce and a garlic toast in front of the judges.

“The scallop is cooked nicely; I like the spice,” Ranzy said.

“This tastes like that frozen Texas Toast that’s so delicious, but so bad for you! That’s impressive,” Fitzgerald commented.

The plates were cleared, making way for a Marc’s team’s dish – a cabbage roll with jerk chicken and curried rice and a hunk of Marc’s own special recipe cornbread, pasta salad, and a coconut pineapple smoothie. The students began snacking on leftovers as the judges wrote down their comments.

Norelli’s group served their sliders with gouda, sautéed mushrooms and caramelized onion, kale salad with homemade potato chips, and fresh-made linguini with spicy shrimp sauce.

“This is better than the kale salad I had for lunch today!” Van Anda exclaimed.

Much eating and little cleaning ensued as Benjamin tallied the points. Chef Vetri called everyone together for a few heartfelt ‘thank you’ speeches and, finally, the prize was revealed: gift certificates to Pizzeria Vetri and a free pass on the rest of the clean up.

The six kids on Norelli’s team whooped and threw their hands up when Benjamin announced their victory. “I was confident, but oh it feels good,” slider-master Kevin said.

Chef Vetri left satisfied, the students’ performance was evidence of all they had learned over the semester. They had been listening; the proof is in the pasta.

Guts in Buckets

“I’m a killer!” Cathy Stronjy’s voice shrieks through the phone. It’s two days before Thanksgiving: turkey execution day.

My mom’s on the phone with our neighbor and friend, coordinating our plans to help her slaughter the main feature of our Thanksgiving meal. “I don’t want you sweet beautiful people getting all bloody,” she protested to my mom’s insistence that we come to help.

“But you’re a sweet beautiful person too!” my mom said. No, Cathy’s a killer. 

Two hours later we walked onto the scene: a wooden table covered with a bloody scrap of gray plastic set up just outside the turkey coop. There were a lot of buckets - snow-covered white feathers sticking up out of one, scaly turkey legs in another, and two still-warm, pink birds submerged in water in another.

“You girls have good boots?” Cathy yelled as I walked up. She had the hose on full blast, dunking one of the turkeys in and out of the bucket, sloshing water and blood all over the snowy ground.

“I was hoping to get this a little cleaner for you guys,” Cathy said as she bent the stub of the neck towards her. I heard snaps and pops. Cathy looked up, “Don’t mess with me.”

We had missed the execution hour, but were just in time for de-feathering and pulling out the guts. I tried to be helpful, but ended up mostly watching (and cringing) with fascination. My mom and I pulled out stray feather needles while Cathy slit open the beast’s neck area to get at the innards. She stuck her hand in – no glove – and came out with the gizzard first. She plopped the liver, a deep smooth red, in a pot singing “Pateeeè!”  The heart was set aside to be boiled with lots of garlic and the rest – lungs, intestine, kidneys – spilled onto the turkey legs in the bucket.

“Now this is probably one of the weirdest things you’ll ever see,” Cathy said, picking up the gizzard and a knife. She carefully cut through the ‘seam’ in the blue-tinged organ, about the size of a grapefruit. She pulled apart the two halves, revealing a balloon like sac, plump with… I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know what. “Is that poop?!” Cathy shook her head and punctured the sack. The splats resounding in the bucket changed to a tinkling as small stones poured out among masticated green roughage. The gizzard grinds the stones against the food the bird has ingested, aiding in digestion.

Apparently, if you do it well, the gizzard pouch pulls out very neatly in its own little wrapper. “My sisters and I used to sit around having gizzard peeling contests,” Cathy laughed, “Now is that hillbilly or is that hillbilly?”

After the turkeys cooled down in the snow on her porch we brought them in for a last once over. We peeled of the thin layer of skin membrane and pulled out a few more feather tips. Cathy stuck her hands underneath the skin up the back to stretch it out for us. “Now you can just slip the herbs and butter right in there!”

These were the third and fourth turkeys Cathy had butchered that day. “I just decided to be glad about doing this,” she said. She raised the turkeys for meat and they had a good happy life eating weeds out of her garden. She’s glad to be able to provide her family and friends with a good bird on Thanksgiving, and there’s just no reason to be sad about it.

Confections with Convictions

            

If you need a little extra comfort in your life in the midst of finals, I have good news: a new line of chocolate is available on campus. The bonus? It’s from a local business that’s making a huge impact in our community.

                  Last Tuesday the campus bookstore debuted Confections with Convictions’ chocolate bark and coated nuts. Dale Anderson, Kalamazoo native, started the chocolate shop four years ago to provide employment for previously convicted youth. As a counselor, he saw the lack of employment opportunities for these kids as an immense barrier to their growth as self-reliant adults.

                  Many kitchen experiments and a few culinary classes later and Anderson has a thriving chocolate business, currently employing five teenagers who have been through the court system in Kalamazoo. He shared a story about a young woman who hadn’t finished high school and was living at Kalamazoo Gospel Mission (a shelter that provides recovery services for people experiencing homelessness) when she started working at the shop. She has since completed her GED and is finishing school at KVCC this year. 

                  Anderson is also conscious of the global impacts of his operation. Upon learning about the slave labor in the Ivory Coast and Ghana – where 70% of the world’s cocoa beans is grown – Anderson committed to 100% fair trade sourcing. “If I was helping kids in Kalamazoo at the expense of kids in Ghana,” Anderson said, “it isn’t really win win.” Confections with Convictions also uses resource-conservative packaging and purchases local ingredients whenever possible.

                 

We can thank Ly Nguyen, K ’14 who volunteers at the chocolate shop, for bringing this delicious product to campus. “We wanted to have fair trade products but we didn’t know where to look or how to order,” Debbie Thomson, director of the bookstore said. In addition to connecting them with SERRVE, an organization that supports small-scale artisans and farmers around the world, Nguyen brought them samples of Anderson’s chocolate.

                  The bookstore now carries several flavors of bark – I tried dark chocolate with dried papya and pistachio – and ‘bites – assorted seasoned chocolate-coated nuts. Reasonably priced ($4 for 4 oz.), it makes a great gift to take home for the holidays. (I have to admit, my purchase was more of a self-indulgent pick-me-up.)

                  Stop by the shop (located less than 2 miles from campus at 116 W Crosstown Pkwy) and try one of 70 flavors of truffles - first one’s on Dale! Bring your student ID and receive a 5% discount through December.

SweetStreet

            Sweetwater Donut and Water Street Coffee Twist made its debut as K College’s signature frozen yogurt flavor last Thursday. CEO and Founder, Pete Palazzolo, and Head of Accounts, Dave Seidel, set up in the caf during lunch to reveal the new flavor.

                  As a staff member working to promote efforts of sustainability in Dining Services, I was involved in the process of developing the flavor. We felt it was important to make it unique to Kalamazoo while supporting local businesses.

                  Pete took the time to visit with students at their tables, giving advice as a successful and proud entrepreneur. “It’s not as bad out there as you think,” he assured us. “I mean, it was bad when I first started and I still made it.”

                  Students lined up to sample the new flavors and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. “Oh my god, it tastes like a donut!” I heard over and over, stunned expression after a first spoonful. “How do they do that?!”

                  Well, with donuts. Palazzolo’s blended Sweetwater’s glazed and Boston Crème donuts and steeped them in the cream as the base for the yogurt. This is essentially the process for making any of their over 200 flavors; steep the ingredient in the crème and then strain it out. 

Sweetwater’s has a stellar reputation on campus and the academic lifestyle often requires a caffeine boost. The combination made sense. Plus, coffee and donuts? It’s classic.

                   As for putting a name on our twist, take out the redundant ‘water’ and you end up with SweetStreet. We could feature the charming brick of Academy Street on the label…

Thoughts?

Michael Pollan Speaks to Kalamazoo Community

Michael Pollan, best-selling author and journalism professor at UC, Berkley, addressed a jam-packed Miller Auditorium last Thursday night. The Kalamazoo Community Foundation invited Pollan to talk with the Kalamazoo community about the importance of creating a healthy food system.

After the standard comments about the Glenn Miller song and Derek Jeter, Pollan presented his theme for the night: cooking.

Rather than vaguely covering the plethora of issues that plague our food system, Pollan focused on the one activity, the one essential skill that makes us distinct from other species. “Externalizing part of the digestion process,” or, more simply put, cooking.

The average American spends 27 minutes per day cooking. [If that sounds too high an estimation, which is scary in itself, consider that the market researchers’ definition of cooking is combining two or more ingredients. Making a peanut butter sandwich qualifies as cooking.]

According to Pollan, we’ve outsourced this innate and sensual process of preparing our nourishment.  He puts part of the blame on big food corporations who brought the daily activity of the home kitchen into the factory. As American citizens, particularly women, began to spend more time in the workplace a market opened up for convenience eating.

The commercial food industry seized the opportunity, and our food started to be ‘cooked’ in incomprehensible quantities, with the cheapest ingredients and most appealing packaging. But, as the consumers and demanders, we can’t blame the producers entirely. “We are all complicit in this system,” Pollan noted. 

He admitted that the ‘foodie’ movement annoys him as much as anybody at times, but he sees it as benign excitement. Excitement about remembering this innate practice that is so sustaining and life-giving. 

Carrie Pickett-Erway, President/CEO of the Kalamazoo Community Foundation,  selected several questions from the over 100 submitted. When asked how to make healthy food more accessible to low-income populations, Pollan said, “Well, we could start by paying them more!” Applause rippled from the audience.

It’s not about bringing local food costs down; “Your local farmer is not getting rich.” It’s about reexamining our government subsidies and restructuring our ‘living wage’.

Pollan thinks the next wave of the food movement will happen at the institutional level. It’s all about procurement; where are you buying the food you’re buying. “Corporations and institutions have incredible power to change the system.”

Pollan’s talk brought the systemic food crisis to a basic, personal level. What can we all do now to make a difference in the way we eat? Make a difference in the way we eat. 

Close-to-Kalamazoo Dinner

“Kale chips?! Oh my god. They have kale chips.”

I heard countless variations of this comment as I enjoyed my apple crisp at the local dinner in the caf last Wednesday night. In collaboration with Farms to K, dining services put together a menu to promote local growers and producers in (belated) celebration of National Food Day.

October 24^th was designated as Food Day in 2011 to inspire Americans to change our diets and our food systems. The organization ‘Food Day’ works toward a ‘vision of food that is healthy, affordable, and produced with care for the environment, farm animals, and the people who grow, harvest, and serve it’.

Our local dinner was one of thousands of national events promoting conscious action in improving our ways of eating. And, yes, for some that may include eating more kale chips. The novelty-turned-trendy snack food was arguably the most popular local item on the menu.

In case you too were distracted by the kale chips and overlooked the rest of the locally sourced offerings in your excitement, I’ve compiled a list. Look at what we can grow and produce so close to K’s campus!