Iron Chef ESYNOLA!

You are probably familiar with cooking reality shows: chefs looking fierce and competitive, dramatic music, sweat, barked orders, fire and smoke, slander and tears, and at the end: disappointment or bragging or a plot of revenge.

Well, Iron Chef ESYNOLA-style is nothing like that.

When adapting the event to our garden-based cooking program, Edible Schoolyard New Orleans only kept the good parts. On Wednesday, November 6, at Arthur Ashe and Thursday, November 7, at Samuel J. Green, chefs from restaurants across the city joined FirstLine students to concoct creative dishes using a secret ingredient: Satsumas.

At ESYNOLA’s version of Iron Chef, esteemed chefs were paired with student cooking teams. At Ashe, teams bustled in the hallway, kitchen, and garden classroom, and the fifth graders who participated were the envy of all the passers by. “Do we get to do that one day?” an Ashe third grader asked a cooking teacher. “Yes you do!” she replied. At Green, teams of seventh grade teams set up in the teaching kitchen and outside in the courtyard overlooking the garden.

During the competition, students were engaged in the planning process, and offered suggestions about preparation, names for dishes, and presentation. Everyone pitched in to get all the tasks done: shelling peas, stirring batter, dicing and stir-frying veggies, and boiling pasta. Visiting chefs relayed their expertise in small lessons, like how to filet a fish, how to brown butter, how to candy a kumquat and quick-pickle a turnip.

In the final dishes, Satsumas appeared in the most unexpected places: dessert soup, with apples and lavender in smoothies and juices, ceviche, sweet & savory bread pudding, barbecue sauce, beignets. All of this made for a tough job for the judges from each school and the two surprise celebrity judges (record-breaking barefoot runner Joseph Michael Liu at Ashe and Green Charter’s recent retiree sweetheart Grandma Luke). As the judges tasted and scored each dish, visiting chefs told the crowd how impressed they were with the creativity, hand skills, intuition, and teamwork of their student teams. “I wish my kids at home were this good in the kitchen,” one told the judges. “I look forward to this event all year. It is an honor to be part of it,” said another.

Yes, our Iron Chef was a competition, just like on TV. And at the end of each day only one team got to go home with golden spoons. But the difference is that at FirstLine Schools, it doesn’t really matter who won. What’s more important is that, in the words of a fifth grader, “This makes me feel so special.”

Thank you to everyone who made our children feel special: FirstLine faculty and staff, our celebrity judges; Fresh Market, who donated the food for the event; and the generous chefs from Woody’s Fish Tacos, Pizza Delicious, La Petite Grocery, Sylvain, NOLA Pie Guy, Delachaise, Juan’s Flying Burrito, Louisiana Seafood Exchange, Moe’s Pizza, Pagoda’s Café, Dinner Lab, Shortall’s BBQ in 12 Mile Limit, Full of Flavor (Chef Gason Nelson), Restaurant August, Broussards, and Whole Foods Market, Arabella Station.