Last one, I swear

It’s been over a week since returning to NYC, but I’m still coming down from my New Orleans/volunteering high. So much so that I dragged Eric with me to volunteer with NY Cares this past week. We ended up planting trees in Fort Tryon park in Inwood for a few hours on Saturday (with perfect weather for such an activity). We also walked up to The Cloisters after gardening (but in a sign of how incredibly out of shape I am, we had to take a five-minute break after making it up halfway).

Anyway, despite being home and jumping right back into work and the million other things I tend to get wrapped up in, I find my mind constantly wandering back to New Orleans: the experiences, the people, and the food.

The twelve volunteers represented a fairly diverse group in terms of experience, age and geography. Excluding myself and a lawyer (who interns at a restaurant a few nights a week), almost everyone is actively working in the industry in some regard – a few restaurant chefs, two people previously owned their own restaurant/bakery, a handful of personal chefs/caterers and some involved with culinary education. One volunteer even wrote a cookbook – the beautiful Brownie Lover’s Bible (we got to sample some of her creatioins…amazing!). I was clearly the least qualified person there. It was a little humbling, but great in that I definitely learned a lot from my fellow volunteers. Especially informative was my work with the two pastry chefs – they helped me figure out why I have to chisel my French macarons off the parchment paper and inevitably look like turds and why my chocolate cake sometimes rises beautifully and other times deflates into itself (both ways taste delicious, however).

But despite our differences, everyone is passionate about food, cooking, teaching, and especially eating. Nothing illustrates this better than our last night in New Orleans. We had just spent that entire morning and early afternoon reigning in third-graders at the Edible Schoolyard where most of us exerted significantly more energy trying to keep the students from running off than we did cooking. So, to end a successful day and trip, Christine - the CulinaryCorps leader - had arranged dinner at Cochon that would be preceded by a tour of the new Butcher Shop.

When we walked into Butcher Shop, the twelve of us immediately scattered – poking into everything – the salumi, the jars of pickles and pepper jelly, the t-shirts, the menus, the cookbooks – asking questions to the cooks and bartender, and causing general chaos in the small space. We turned into third-graders. Our excitement grew even more when we got to see what I like to refer to as heaven.

This tour was followed by the most amazing meal at Cochon. We feasted on:

• Crawfish pie
• Fried rabbit livers with pepper jelly toast
• Wood-fired oyster roast
• Fried alligator with chili garlic aioli
• Boucherie plate (head cheese)
• Fried boudin with pickled peppers
• Pork cracklins with cane syrup
• Ham hock with sweet potatoes, pickled greens and black eye pea ham broth
• Rabbit and dumplings
• Oven-roasted gulf fish "fisherman's style"
• Green tomato & crawfish casserole
• Creamy grits
• Eggplant and shrimp dressing
• Lane cake (layer cake soaked in bourbon)
• Pineapple upside-down cake

The next day, most of us headed to the airport early. However, since my flight wasn’t until 1:40pm, I decided to check my suitcase, grab two of my fellow volunteers who also had later flights and head back downtown for one final meal at Butcher Shop (adding in the meal at Herbsaint my first night in New Orleans, I had four meals at Donald Link restaurants in one week...no, I don't see that as a problem). One of my favorite things about eating with chefs is that they like to try and share everything. So between the three of us, we ate:

• Cuban sandwich with cochon du lait
• Pastrami with sauerkraut on rye
• Pork belly on white bread with mint and cucumber
• Duck pastrami with bechamel
• Foie gras on toast with Louisiana strawberry jam (our dessert)

I also walked out of there with two pounds of andouille, a huge chunk of capicola and some tasso. Before heading back to the airport, we made a little detour to Central Grocery so I could grab a muffuletta to take back home for Eric.

In addition to the Donald Link restaurants, I also had an incredible sandwich at Susan Spicer's Bayona. Smoked duck with chunky cashew butter, pepper jelly, and caramelized onions on toasted whole grain bread with an apple and celery salad. This dish hit the full spectrum of textures and flavors: spicy peppers, sweet red caramelized onion, smoky and meaty duck breast, tart crisp apples, creamy cashew butter and chewy bread. My fellow volunteers heard about this sandwich all week long.

All in all, an amazing, exhausting and delicious week. This was my fourth trip to New Orleans, and despite my usual aversion to going to the same place multiple times, I can’t wait to get down there again (fortunately, our friends will be moving there at the end of the summer, so we have another excuse to get down there soon…but we’ll wait until late fall). Until then, I will dream about pork cheeks, smoked duck sandwiches and gumbo…

Artichokes and alligators

Our last full day in New Orleans was spent at the Samuel J. Green Charter School in the Edible Schoolyard. The Edible Schoolyard concept was originally founded by Alice Waters in California – the program in New Orleans is the second in the country. Through gardening and cooking, ESY reinforces classroom lessons like science, social studies, language and math while teaching students an appreciation of food and community.


For our day at ESY, we split into six groups to take fifty third-graders to the Crescent City Farmer’s Market to shop for ingredients and then prepare lunch. My partner and I had six students and $25 to make an entrée for 65 people (students, teachers and volunteers).

The kids were excited (sometimes a little too excited for my sanity…I was more exhausted after 2.5 hours with the third-graders than the 15 hours of cooking, prepping and serving at Liberty’s Kitchen). For most of the students, this was their first trip to a farmer’s market and their first time seeing much of the produce and meat offered.

The kids were fearless. They wanted to try everything – pesto, artichokes, feta cheese, goat’s milk, olives, mizuna…nothing was too “out there” for these kids (my first olive that wasn’t a “pitted black” was eaten at 22 years of age). Much of our time was spent chasing kids who would inevitably get sidetracked by the different vendors and their goods (after all, there was a praline vendor). The farmers were incredibly tolerant – talking with the students about the food and giving samples (even after my group knocked a bin of squash all over the ground in their excitement about the rainbow chard).

My partner and I originally planned to make some type of vegetarian sandwich with goat cheese (after all, we only had $25), but that quickly changed when we encountered the market vendor with alligator sausage. No one (including myself and my partner) had tried this before, so we quickly conferred with our group and with their approval, switched gears. Back at the school, the students got busy cutting the olives, artichokes, and tomatoes with plastic knives (although they REALLY wanted to use our chef knives), snipping chives and mizuna with little scissors, and squeezing the alligator sausage out of the casings. We created a tasty alligator sausage-muffaletta-po’boy hybrid with a marinated olive and artichoke spread.

The menu for the day included the following (no small feat considering we were working with portable burners and folding tables in a converted girl’s locker room, plastic knives for the students and no running water):

• Whole wheat penne with caramelized cauliflower
• Squash and smoked chicken tacos with fresh salsa
• Alligator sausage sandwiches with mizuna, tomatoes and marinated olive and artichoke salad
• Strawberry and fresh herb salad with citrus vinaigrette
• Creamy whole wheat penne with tasso and edible flowers
• Fresh strawberry and mint soda
• Louisiana strawberry shortcake with Smith's creamery cream

While I was completely mentally tapped out after lunch was finished, this day was one of the most rewarding experiences of the week. The enthusiasm of the students, while exhausting, was infectious. Teaching people who are fully engaged and want to learn is truly exciting...even if they can only use plastic knives...

Removal from the back burner

So I’m back from my week in New Orleans. It’s been a little shaky facing the reality of work again, but I’m slowly getting there. Fortunately, my first day back in the office was a Thursday...and the upcoming weekend ahead is going to be warm and busy.

However, I realize that because of the jam-packed week in New Orleans combined with the slight sleep deprivation and limited internet access in the dorm (I could get one bar of wireless sitting in small closet with a broken chair), my recent posts have been focused on WHAT we were doing but not on WHY we were doing it. So here goes.

Like most Americans, I watched the news in shock and horror as the levees broke and water flooded into New Olreans, filling it like a plugged sink. I read about the nightmare of the Superdome and saw the images of people sitting on their roofs waiting to be rescued. Like many others across the country, I immediately donated money to the American Red Cross. Then a year passed, and I donated a little more. But new stories came up and our collective attention turned to other topics like the war, the election, the earthquake in China, and any variety of other breaking news headlines. Life had moved on and, as a country, so had we. Katrina became old news and the plight of the people of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast had moved to the proverbial “back burner.”

Eric and I visited post-Katrina New Orleans in December 2007 for our friends’ wedding. And while one could feel that it was a city rebuilding, things didn’t seem that bad. After all, it had been a few years since the levees broke. Of course, we were staying right near the French Quarter and Warehouse District – two areas least impacted by the flooding. What we missed during that trip – and what I vastly underestimated – was the devastation to the rest of the city and surrounding areas.

On our first day as CulinaryCorps volunteers, Ashley Graham – Director of Share our Strength for Louisiana – took us on a recovery tour of New Orleans. We toured the Ninth Ward – both the Upper and Lower districts. Only then did I truly understand the true horrors of what these residents dealt with in 2005 and the huge challenges that they still face today.

This is an image prominent throughout New Orleans. These marks identify who searched the house after the flooding, whether there were any issues like exposed power lines, and tragically, how many bodies were found in the house. Some thoughtful people would also add whether they saw any pets at the house.

The Upper Ninth Ward is still fairly congested – houses line up right against each other with very little space – typical urban residential setting. There are houses that have been completely rebuilt, some that are in process, and a significant number that are still boarded up. Some residents have painted over these spray paint symbols, but many still remain, manifesting how much work still remains.

As for the Lower Ninth Ward…that’s a completely different story. Originally just as congested as the Upper Ninth, the Lower Ninth Ward is now sparsely populated. There is a lot of new construction – from Brad Pitt’s “Make it Right” organization to the work of Habitat for Humanity. But there are tons of empty lots with overgrown grass and cement front stairs…an indication that the houses were destroyed and nature had taken over. Today, only 10% of the residents are back in the Lower Ninth Ward.

The levee in the Lower Ninth Ward. The cement in the foreground was once a house.

In addition to the physical destruction that Katrina caused, there was also a significant impact to the infrastructure of the already struggling school system of New Orleans. Many of the schools were rendered unusable and new schools and programs had to be developed. A number of charter schools have been opened in the past few years and a feeling of hope now marks educators and residents of the city. But progress is still slow.

CulinaryCorps was founded in 2006 by Christine Carroll, a graduate of FCI (I found out about the program through our alumni email newsletter). We were the sixth group to go to New Orleans. In its inception, CulinaryCorps was more about service to the community at that present moment (e.g. feeding volunteers). And while that is something we did this past week, we were also involved in a number of programs developed to create a better future for the children and the community.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. I will provide updates on some of the other activities (and food) from the week soon. At the moment, I’m still mentally sorting out everything we did while trying to catch up on both sleep and work. But for now, just know that four years later, New Orleans is still a city recovering and rebuilding from Katrina…and while it may not be the leading headline on the news, the city and its residents should not be forgotten.

Graffiti art from English artist Banksy on a building in New Orleans.

The Shawshank Prevention

After about thirty years of a lifelong sentence, Red tells Andy that “Hope is a dangerous thing” behind prison walls.

But what about in front of them?

For much of the youth in New Orleans, hope does not exist. After the devastation of Katrina, so much has been lost and destroyed for this population who had so little to begin with. While the city is rebuilding, it’s a slow process. And unfortunately, for some teens, prison is almost an inevitability.

That’s where Liberty’s Kitchen steps in. Amidst the bail bonds shops and attorney offices and across the street from the New Orleans courthouse – which itself is next door to a prison – Liberty’s Kitchen offers hope to the at-risk youth in the area. A small coffee shop and café that was completely submerged by Katrina, Liberty’s Kitchen offers 16-20 year olds the opportunity to gain valuable skills – not so much a “culinary training program” as much as an “employability training program”. This allows for the opportunity for one under-served population serving another under-served population. And with partnerships with social services (GED program, mental health organization and public defenders), Liberty’s Kitchen helps students transition to a job after they finish the program.

Liberty’s Kitchen held its opening gala party/fundraiser on Saturday night – an event that our CulinaryCorps team helped produce. Working with the ebullient co-founder/Executive Chef and the sous-chef, our team executed a 150-person dinner – based on the chef’s menu, we also brought our own ideas to the table.

Chef Reggie is a New Orleans native who came back the Thursday after Katrina where he spent most of his hours cooking and feeding all of the workers who were rescuing people and fixing electrical issues. Since then he became involved with Café Reconcile, a restaurant with the similar mission of helping teens. and has committed himself to doing what he can to help this disadvantaged group.

But, as Chef Reggie so succinctly puts it: “Hope is not a passive thing.” In a recurring theme of the week: hope exists, but people need to engage to make it a reality. Like the volunteers at Camp Hope who were rebuilding houses to provide hope to the residents of New Orleans, our team worked from 8am to 11pm to provide hope to Liberty’s Kitchen and subsequently, the teens in the area so affected by Katrina.

Our combined menu for the evening:

• Redfish Gougonette on a Cauliflower Puree
• Pork Tenderloin Tournedos with Corn Pudding and Gingersnap Gravy
• Andouille Sausage with Sweet and Sour Cabbage
• Shrimp Remoulade
• Pulled Pork on Sweet Potato Biscuits with Apple-cranberry Jelly
• Pasta Jambalaya Orzo with Smoked Chicken
• Sweet Corn Cake Topped with Fried Quail Eggs, Greens and Bacon and a Mustard Gastrique
• Crawfish Risotto
• Pissaladiere with Fig Olive Tapenade
• Bayou Brownie with Caramelized Banana and Pepper Praline Sauce
• Strawberry Po’Boys with Chocolate and Vanilla Custard

The music was playing, the beer was flowing, and everyone was happy, full and excited about the possibilities of Liberty's Kitchen.

I hope that Liberty Kitchen succeeds. I hope that these teens see the world of opportunities available outside the prison walls.

I hope.

This is why we're here

In the past few years, I’ve thrown countless dinner parties, catered numerous events, and even given private instruction to a handful of people. And I’ve never received a standing ovation for my cooking. Until the other night.

For the first event of our CulinaryCorps adventure, we went to Camp Hope in St. Bernard Parish – a county outside New Orleans that was devastated by Katrina. Located in a middle school, Camp Hope houses and feeds the hundreds of Habitat for Humanity volunteers that come down to Louisiana. On a given week, there could be anywhere between 200-800 volunteers staying at Camp Hope. The volunteers are building houses in St. Bernard parish as well as the Lower Ninth Ward.

There is a group of Americorps volunteers who are responsible for running Camp Hope. They cook all of the meals for the volunteers – a daunting task, especially with the limited resources (Camp Hope relies heavily on donations – which can be sporadic and random…when we were there, they just received a few cases of catfish fillets and 60 pounds of margarine). It’s a huge undertaking, the food is mostly canned and/or frozen and the meals are focused more on volume and the ability to feed everyone (unfortunately, the number of diners each night varies greatly – 200 people may say they are eating dinner, but 300 show up).

So we went on Friday afternoon to cook dinner for Camp Hope. It was “Dinner Impossible” meets “Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee”. After going through the freestanding walk-in freezer, the pantry, the dry goods and the canned goods, we created the following meal for 200 hungry volunteers in two hours:

• Fried oysters with a creole mustard sauce
• Panzanella salad with bacon on the side
• Chickpea salad with an orange-red pepper vinaigrette
• Catfish parmesan
• Pasta alla Toscana (with mushrooms, artichokes and mozzarella cheese)
• Chicken & sausage etouffée
• Soy and bean vegetarian chili
• Huevos ranchero frittata
• Banana-peanut butter creme brulée
• Almond-stuffed plums

To say that the volunteers appreciated the food is a vast understatement. It was impossible not to get emotional as the volunteers were thanking us again and again. This group of people who have taken time to help rebuild houses for the residents of New Orleans were thanking us for doing what we love to do...feed people. Their gratitude during the standing ovation was enough to make even the most cynical person a little misty.

From Apple to Easy

So I’ve traded one “Big” for another. I’ve been in New Orleans for about three hours and have already eaten two meals. I checked into my hotel, changed (as it’s a gorgeous mid-70’s here, unlike the rainy 50’s back in NYC) and went directly to Café du Monde. Touristy, yes. Delicious? Absolutely. I think it's a state law that a stop at this landmark is mandatory when visiting New Orleans.

Just me, the latest Food & Wine, a chicory café au lait (not decaf…so needless to say, I was a bit energetic after that…which wasn’t a bad thing considering the 6:50am flight), and a pile of confectioner’s sugar over beignets. The most relaxing 30 minutes I’ve spent in quite some time.

After a few hours, I decided to trek in the opposite direction to Cochon, home of one of my favorite meals of 2007. When Eric and I ate here that December, we fell in love with this restaurant. Casual, gently-priced, and most importantly, delicious food – namely pork. I was a little worried that the meal would not live up to the memory (after all, sausage-stuffed fried shrimp? Fried chicken livers on pepper toast?)…however, I think today’s lunch may actually be better than that first meal.

Trust me when I say that this picture absolutely does not do the dish justice. Paneed pork cheeks with goat cheese, arugula and a beet rosti. The goat cheese was more like a sauce and was surrounded by the richest pork jus. The cheeks were tender, flavorful and a little caramelized, and went perfectly with the slightly sweet and crispy beet rosti.

As for why I’m in Crescent City in the first place? I’m actually volunteering with CulinaryCorps – a culinary outreach program created to assist communities through food, cooking, education and exchange. Along with twelve other people, we will be focusing on the rebuilding efforts and culinary renaissance of New Orleans, Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast for the coming week (after all, if Eric can go fishing with his brother and father for a week, I can go cooking for a week). It will be busy and intense, but I can’t wait to get started…tomorrow that is.

Today, however, I’m going to just continue eating my way through this fantastic culinary city.

P.S. A huge, heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who generously donated to CulinaryCorps! I'll be sure to update the blog with plenty pictures so you can see the good that your dollars are doing for the communities here.

B is for Birthday

When I was in junior high, I remember thinking that in the year 2000, I would be SO old - a whopping 24 years. It seemed both ancient and light years away.

Well, I’ve since leap-frogged significantly beyond that monumental date (I was far more traumatized turning 24 than I was turning 30). So what did I do this year to celebrate my Larry Bird year?

Pork, pork and more pork.

It started with a small get-together with friends and a nine-pound pork butt. Rather than going out for dinner, I made the Momofuku Bo Ssam. Tender slow-cooked pork butt (in the oven for seven hours) with quick pickled jalapenos, rice vinegar and sesame pickled cucumber, sautéed shiitake mushrooms and big leaves of lettuce for wrapping. This was preceded by some apple cider and shallot glazed chorizo, pigs in a blanket (of course), prosciutto-wrapped mozzarella-stuffed peppadews, mac and cheese (at Anuradha’s request) and chickpea, mozzarella and tomato bruschetta (have to have at least one non-pork offering).

On Friday, I received one of the greatest birthday gifts ever from my friends at work – Sarah, Mary and Renee. At a client lunch with Mary about two years ago, we had an in-depth conversation about our five favorite things…excluding family, friends, pets, and esoteric concepts like world peace and happiness (all of those are a given for most people). After much consideration and stack ranking, my list came down to the five “B’s”: bourbon, bacon, butter, Boston sports teams, and the beach.

So here’s what they got me:


Nueske’s applewood smoked bacon, pork lardo (yep, that’s strips of cured pork fat), a bottle of Knob Creek (which may or may not have been cracked opened around 3pm on Friday afternoon), Vermont Cheese Company sweet salted butter and a gift certificate to Bliss spa. Plus the phenomenal homemade card with pictures of some of my other favorite things: if you look closely, there’s a pottery wheel, the Truffle Shuffle, Jack from LOST (Sawyer is behind the Knob Creek), Bill from True Blood, Eric Ripert, and Yoda-pug. What you can’t see are the “I love Jake Ryan” picture, a giant Stewie head and the PTI guys.

To follow this, Eric and I went to dinner at Bar Boulud, Daniel Boulud’s casual restaurant in Lincoln Center. We ordered the large charcuterie platter – a huge board of cold meats, patés and terrines including the smooth paté grand-mere, the coarse truffle, foie gras and pork paté grand-pere, slow-cooked lamb terrine combined with chunks of sweet potatoes, beef cheeks with onions and pistachios, rabbit blended with zucchini, the signature headcheese, thin slices of saucisson sec and a pile of housemade ham de Paris D’Italie. We should have stopped there…but continued on with the boudin blanc over mashed potatoes and the Frisée Lyonnaise – chicory, chicken liver, poached egg, and lardons. Both of these dishes were extraneous - we didn't come close to finishing either one. However, since one can't have a birthday without dessert, we ordered the chocolate tart and were rewarded with the most amazingly smooth chocolate concoction.

On Saturday, we braved the treacherous rain in our Zipcar mini Cooper and shopped a bit at Woodbury Commons (Eric was much more successful than me) and then spent a few hours with my long-lost adopted Korean twin sister (really, my college roommate) and her family. A day that was, amazingly, pork-free.

We closed out the birthday festivities last night with a delicious bottle of Petit Syrah that my co-worker John makes (same John from the Samoas takedown) and my bastardized version of Cuban sandwiches (leftover bo ssam with asiago cheese - the only cheese we had in the fridge -chopped scallions and parsley and a relish made from McClure's spicy pickles).

So while it may be long past the year 2000, I can’t imagine a better way to spend my 33rd birthday.