[Sca-cooks] OOP - Not sure how to react to this NYT article

[charding at nwlink.com]

About 10 years ago I was on the board of directors of a soup kitchen in
Anchorage.  I can tell you that the cooks in the kitchen took great pride
in producing wonderful food, not just food.  And they often had very
interesting things to cook with ---reindeer and caribou, muktuk, seal
meat, etc...

Maeva
(usually in An Tir, but in Pa dealing with family things at the moment.)



> I'm not sure if this comes under the heading of, "Another Festivus
> miracle!", a comment on the local economy, or an indication of just
> how bizarre my home town is, but there's a very interesting article
> in this morning's New York Times food section about four-star soup
> kitchens:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/dining/20soup.html
>
> December 20, 2006
>
> On the Soup Line, Endive and Octopus
>
> By KIM SEVERSON
> EVEN at the soup kitchen, everyone’s a critic.
>
> The multicourse lunch that Michael Ennes cooked in the basement of
> Broadway Presbyterian Church last week started with a light soup of
> savoy and napa cabbages. The endive salad was dressed with basil
> vinaigrette. For the main course, Mr. Ennes simmered New Jersey bison
> in wine and stock flavored with fennel and thickened with olive oil
> roux.
>
> But some diners thought the bison was a little tough, and the menu
> discordant.
>
> “He’s good, but sometimes I think the experimentation gets in the way
> of good taste,” said Jose Terrero, 54. Last year, Mr. Terrero made a
> series of what he called inappropriate financial decisions, including
> not paying his rent. He now sleeps at a shelter. He has eaten at
> several New York City soup kitchens, and highly recommends Mr.
> Ennes’s food.
>
> Mr. Ennes, a former English major who reads Thomas Paine and wears a
> black and white neckerchief with a turquoise clasp, might be the best
> soup kitchen chef in New York City. On Thanksgiving, when most of the
> cooks at the city’s other 470-some soup kitchens simply roasted
> turkey, he prepared “turkey four ways,” including one with mango-
> ginger glaze and tropical fruit stuffing.
>
> There will be no canned green beans or bologna sandwiches. Mr. Ennes
> insists on homemade stocks, oils without trans fats, organic peanut
> butter and local produce when he can get it. (That’s not to say he
> won’t stretch a meal with some frozen turkey patties or use a little
> powdered soup base in a pinch.)
>
> Despite the care he puts into his cooking, he doesn’t mind a little
> criticism.
>
> “They’re still customers, whether they’re paying $100 a plate or
> nothing,” Mr. Ennes said. “One thing we do here is listen to people
> and let them complain. Where else can a homeless person get someone
> to listen to them?”
>
> Mr. Ennes, 55, cooks about 500 meals a week for people who come to
> the church on the corner of Broadway and 114th Street in search of a
> free breakfast or lunch. At night, a handful of women in need of
> shelter sleep upstairs. He feeds them, too.
>
> The people who eat at Broadway Community Inc., the social service
> organization that employs Mr. Ennes and rents space in the church,
> are only a small slice of the 260,000 New Yorkers who every week
> visit some emergency feeding program. About 40 percent of the people
> who eat at Mr. Ennes’s table live in a shelter or take cover in the
> parks or the subways. The rest have a temporary home of some sort, on
> a friend’s couch or the roof of a building where they know the super.
> Some don’t earn enough to cover rent.
>
> Mr. Ennes relies on the Food Bank for New York City, donations and
> grants, but he also employs the creativity of a desperate cook. When
> he’s out of wine, he uses fruit juice or borrows communion wine from
> the understanding pastor at the church upstairs. (He has to make sure
> all the alcohol is cooked off; many of his clients are trying to
> recover from alcoholism.)
>
> The bread basket that sits on each table is filled with rolls that
> were baked at Le Bernardin the day before but never served. Le
> Bernardin is among nearly 150 high-end restaurants that regularly
> donate through City Harvest, a nonprofit that for 25 years has been
> “rescuing” extra food. The list of donors, which includes
> corporations, farms and grocery stores, totals more than 2,000.
> Without City Harvest, Mr. Ennes would be hard-pressed to present the
> menus he does.
>
> Though the quality of the ingredients is often impeccable, he doesn’t
> always know what he’s going to get or what form it’s going to take.
> Last week brought a large plastic sack of asparagus, both white
> stalks and pencil-thin green ones. They were beautiful, except all
> the tips had been snapped off. Before that, there was a shipment of
> pineapple slices, each with a star punched out of the middle, and
> several foil trays filled with braised baby octopus. He disguised
> some of the octopus in a soup and used the rest in a salad for the
> women’s shelter.
>
> Surprise contributions come from other sources, too. Mr. Ennes
> teaches cooking, nutrition and food service skills to homeless
> people, who in turn help prepare meals. In November, a student
> brought a leg of venison from his family in Georgia. Mr. Ennes used
> it for stock, which became the base for an Andalusian oxtail and
> lentil stew.
>
> Before the stew was served, Mr. Ennes delivered a short food and
> nutrition lecture to a crowded dining room.
>
> “We’re dealing with the regions of Spain today,” he said in a booming
> voice better suited to a different stretch of Broadway. “The stew has
> no potatoes. It’s served with rice and peas instead. That’s what
> makes it Andalusian.”
>
> People dozed or babbled. Some couldn’t understand a word of English.
> Those who did, though, were amused.
>
> “He should have his own show,” said Duwon Bryant, who drops into the
> center to shower, check e-mail and get a good meal before he heads
> back outside to find a place to sleep. No other soup kitchen has
> Broadway Community’s mix of excellent cooking and supportive
> attitude, he said.
>
> “I’ve been to them all and this is like gourmet,” Mr. Bryant said.
> “Other places will give you slop and say it’s better than nothing.”
>
> Some people said they prefer the food at a soul food soup kitchen in
> Harlem. Others like a slightly tonier East Side soup kitchen that has
> an automatic dishwasher and can use real plates. (Mr. Ennes hates
> serving his food on plastic-foam plates, but he says a dishwasher and
> the plumbing for it would cost about $10,000.) But as with any
> restaurant whose focus is on refined ambiance, a seat at the East
> Side place comes at a cost.
>
> “They don’t let everybody in, so you wait on line and then you get
> turned away if they don’t like how you look,” said Patrick Garrelle,
> 44. “Their door policy is almost like a nightclub with a rope.”
>
> At Broadway Community, everyone gets to eat. There is no humiliating
> food line to stand in. Volunteers set each of Mr. Ennes’s courses in
> front of the diners.
>
> “When you force people to queue up for food, you encourage pushiness
> and aggressiveness and hardness,” he said. “Sitting at a table and
> being served encourages community.”
>
> At one time, Mr. Ennes dreamed of being a starred chef. He was raised
> on the Upper West Side, and initially made money building
> restaurants. He turned to the kitchen, cooking in South Beach and the
> Florida Keys in the 1980s. In 1990, he opened a restaurant on Second
> Avenue and First Street in Manhattan called Orféo, hoping to attract
> the attention of food critics. It never did, and the restaurant
> closed after four years.
>
> Things changed for Mr. Ennes on 9/11. His consulting job with a
> restaurant downtown vanished, and, like many others, he decided to
> make good on a longstanding intention to do more volunteer work. So
> he walked across the street from his apartment to volunteer at
> Broadway Community. In no time, he was the head chef, making $30,000
> a year plus health benefits.
>
> He no longer dreams of feeding stars or getting one.
>
> “I could have spent my life pampering the rich, which is a fine art,”
> he said. “But I think I’ve found where I belong.”
>
> Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
>
>
>
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