By Bethany Bump
The Daily Gazette
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — This was one of their times to pause and catch up, as the sauce was nearly prepped and the chicken still had a way to go.
The five women grabbed their notebooks from the kitchen counter of the Schenectady County Jail and prepared to write.
Chef Ryan Huneau was shaking off a ladle into a steel bowl, explaining why the marsala sauce needed thinning. “All this flour and all this chicken is going to make it look like glue if we don’t thin it out a bit,” he said, grabbing a container of water from the steel counter to his left.
“Why don’t we add more stock, then?” one woman asked.
“You can save on stock by adding water to the chicken as it’s still cooking,” said the Mallozzi Group’s executive chef, who trailed off into an explanation of the difference between stock and broth.
It’s after dinner time when Huneau arrives at the county jail to teach cooking to inmates — Monday is the men’s course and Tuesday is the women’s. At the end of the eight-week program, the inmates will have a test: cook one of the meals they learned correctly and earn a certificate of completion.
This past Tuesday, the women were in their third week and learning to prepare chicken marsala and bruschetta. In earlier classes they had made broccoli and tortellini Alfredo, pizza and chicken wings glazed in honey barbecue, honey mustard and garlic parmesan sauce.
“Honestly, I’ve never taught before. I’ve never actually watched somebody over a span of time become interested in something I’m showing them,” said Huneau, who is volunteering to teach the class for a second year at the jail. “Last year, just watching them learn how to do this was actually what made me do it again.”
The Mallozzi family approached Sheriff Dom Dagostino last year about offering the first-of-its-kind program at the jail and volunteered to absorb all costs.
“We’re always looking for life skills programs to offer the inmates and we thought this was an appropriate one,” said Dagostino. “To date, we’re very pleased with it. It provides them some skills they can use in a job setting once they leave here. They can potentially go to work in a restaurant, maybe start out with some kitchen prep and that could lead to better things for them.”
catching on
Huneau brings his own equipment and food and starts with the basics: sanitation, knife basics, how to filet a fish, make pasta and wash lettuce.
By their third week, the women were remembering insider tips from one of the region’s best culinary experts.
“I may not talk a lot, but I’m listening,” said Payton, who did talk, but mostly just to ask questions. Payton did not want to give her last name.
All the women were listening, some taking notes, as they scooted around the large kitchen equipment, grabbing a plastic spoon, changing gloves, or spooning chopped tomatoes and basil onto a crostini.
Payton is 25 and from Manhattan, and thinks about doing something in the food service industry when she gets out of jail. She feels good about knowing how to make Alfredo sauce, which she loves, from scratch.
“Sometimes it’s just a little bit overwhelming that I get to experience this because there’s only a few females upstairs and we got picked,” she said. “It’s the whole experience. It’s something that I can always make, and I can always go back and say that I did it.”
A sergeant screens inmates for the cooking class based on the charges they’re in for and their disciplinary record, said Dagostino. To qualify, an inmate must be a minimum security risk, in on minor charges with sentences of under a year, and have no history of violence.
Life skills
The jail offers other life skills programs run by various community organizations, he said, but the professionally taught cooking class is the perfect example of a program that can reap future rewards for the inmates.
“We have to provide programs like this,” said Dagostino. “We would be irresponsible if we didn’t research these kinds of programs that offer a skill set for them to use and possibly make a go of it outside of this facility. I mean, our whole goal is for them not to come back here. So, any tool we can give them to make it on the outside is valuable.”
Anna McLaughlin worked at McDonald’s for two years and Applebee’s for six months before she was in jail, but the 31-year-old “never made anything like this.”
She was dipping chicken cutlets into flour before plopping them into the pan with the mushrooms and marsala sauce.
“We need a rag,” someone said, rushing by.
“As we used to say at McDonald’s, don’t ever say ‘rag,’ ” she said, smiling.
It’s not unusual for some of the inmates to have had cooking experience, whether it be the mother with four children or the guy who worked at Wendy’s for a long time, said Huneau.
“One guy was even a sous chief in Ohio,” he said. “You’ll find a mix. Some of these people are trying to enhance their skills and maybe be a little more productive in their career. Everybody knows how to make chicken parm, but can you do it under pressure? A lot of people can learn a lot of things, but not everybody can work in a restaurant.”
Good options
At best, the cooking program would offer inmates a career option when they’ve finished serving their time. At the very least, it provides an upscale meal for the corrections officers, who tend to line up outside the kitchen by the end of the class when the smell of food is inviting and the servings are bountiful.
“Look what we did,” said Shekia Hope, pointing to the bright tray of bruschetta with a proud look on her face.
The 32-year-old Schenectady woman is used to cooking for her children, but her best tip from Huneau was that presentation matters.
“It’s important,” said Hope. “Because if it looks good, presentation will make you want to taste it and give it a chance. If it looks crappy and unorganized, you’re like ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ ”
She adjusts her hair cap, struggling to remember the crostini trick Huneau taught the women.
She asks Payton, because Payton is always listening.
“What’s the word when it’s still cooking but you’ve turned it off already?” she says. “It’s still on the plate, but the plate is still hot so it’s still cooking.”
“Carryover,” says Payton, who explains that’s why you’re supposed to take chocolate chip cookies out of the oven a little bit early, so the hot tray doesn’t burn them before they cool.
As executive chef, Huneau works out of Treviso and The Brown Derby in Albany, and several other Mallozzi family-owned restaurants. He enjoys teaching the class, he said, so that the men and women know not just how to cook a meal, but how to cook a restaurant-quality meal.
“Once someone’s interest is piqued, then their thirst comes out and you learn more because you’re more receptive to it,” he said. “So toward the beginning, yeah, I’ll do most of the cooking and they’ll do more of the prep and assembling of the product. But toward the end, they’re cooking for me.”
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