everyday heroes

Main Course: LatAsian cuisine creates hunger for learning at Lane HS

by Ellie Spielberg

Apr 10, 2008 11:37 AM

Fusionistas, pick up your forks. You want fusion? Forget those trendy downtown eateries. Just take the J Train to Elderts Lane and Jamaica Avenue and you’ll find a Mexican-Japanese-American chef whipping up incredible LatAsian dishes with kids in Queenslyn.

Walk in the front door of gigantic Franklin Lane HS and you’re in Brooklyn. Walk in the side door and you’re in Queens. Whichever borough you prefer, go up the stairs to the Blue Knight Café, as the student kitchen is called, and you’ll find a bunch of teenagers in hoodies, jeans and Jordans completely rapt as David Espinosa demonstrates the best way to fraisage a ball of pâté à choux.

That’s French for kneading puff-pastry dough.

So how did France get into the mix?

Because in Espinosa’s double period, three-term cooking course, you don’t even get to spill a fleck of flour on your sneakers without a solid semester of theory and, according to Espinosa, baking theory owes a lot to those Gallic masters of dough.

In the second term, students roll up their sleeves and get into the act and in the third they learn design, including creating menus with dishes that the new second-term kids will learn to cook.

Dishes like Sautéed Bok Choi with Pico de Gallo and Ginger-Lime Flan that blow Cuban-Chinese food out of the water. For these kids, a side of black beans and avocado with fried rice is so last year.

These days, however, Espinosa has a lot more on his plate than teaching kids with newly discerning taste buds. He’s trying to keep his popular cooking course from extinction.

“We’re breaking into small academies soon,” he says. “Lane HS owns the cooking course, so to speak, and I have a big job ahead of me selling the concept to one of the new academies.”

But right now he puts that on the back burner and, dressed in his whites, demonstrates technique. “Why wouldn’t you crack an egg on the side of the Cuisinart bowl?” he calls out. “Why wouldn’t you leave a jar of salt out on the counter when you’re mixing a sweet type of dough?”

That any school wouldn’t lap up Espinosa’s cooking course seems unimaginable as you watch lively, engaged students call out the answers: The egg shell would get into the pastry; the salt might be mistaken for sugar. And it seems unimaginable when you hear about the change in student August Crespo since he started cooking up a storm.

“August was always in a lot of trouble and had no direction,” Espinosa says. “He asked me a year ago if he could be in the class. I told him he had a reputation and that if he came to my class he was not going to be demonstrative, argumentative or confrontational. I mean this kid used to spend his time breaking all the windows in the hallway.”

Today, August is passing all his classes and just won first place in the Institute of Culinary Education’s citywide competition. That got him a half-scholarship of $15,000, and now he’s a finalist in another competition that could win him the other half of his college tuition.

“His parents never thought they’d see the day,” Espinosa says. “He calls me ‘The Stalker.’ I’m always after him, looking for him to make sure he’s in school.”

What’s The Stalker’s secret to steering kids away from the streets and into the kitchen?

Crusty on the outside, soft on the inside.

“This should take 10 minutes, not an hour like it took you last time!” he barks over pastry ingredients prepped by Kristian, his sous chef for the day. “You better watch this because you’re going to be making 200 of these pastries at the big dinner in the spring!”

A whirr of the blender, a flurry of flour, flicks of the wrist as he turns and kneads the dough, then kids scurry to their stations in the big kitchen to replicate the process.

“You have to work hard for your food here like Oliver Twist!” shouts Espinosa, a kind of drill-sergeant bon vivant with a shaved head, dark goatee and a twinkle in his eye. He has a big voice and a big laugh that comes into play when one boy flubs it.

“Didn’t you watch what I demonstrated? I can tell that you put the water in all at once instead of drizzling it in. Now no matter how much flour you put in, it’s going to be a sticky mess,” Espinosa chides.

“Oh, we like it when someone messes up,” Espinosa tells the ceiling, arms akimbo. “It’s a learning experience! This way, their knowledge gets solid!”

There’s a lot of knowledge to solidify under Espinosa’s tutelage. Glaze vs. glacé. Sweet vs. savory. Piecrust vs. pizza dough vs. puff pastry. Tarts vs. tortes. Little tricks of the trade, like the fact that raspberries are awesome for a chicken marinade.

It all gets learned in the kitchen where Espinosa is king. Unlike the usual teaching kitchen where everyone stands at a line of stoves or at counters all doing the same procedure, “This kitchen has everyone doing different things at different places, like a real restaurant kitchen, so they can get a feel for it,” says Espinosa.

“I plan on being an executive chef,” says Richard Ayala, who won second prize in the citywide culinary contest.

“I’m going into restaurant management,” says Dexter.

“Cooking is my passion,” says Jasmine.

“I take this class because it’s fun, it smells good, it’s inspiration,” says Kristian.

“Home ec is baking out of a box! Not here,” says Michael.

“When you’re stressed, it’s so much fun to come in here and just cook and eat,” says Haydee, laughing.

“I’m here because my mom’s too lazy to cook,” says Amani.

“Hey, it’s heaven for me when even half the kids in my classes are here because they want to be and didn’t just wind up here,” Espinosa puts in.

And it’s seventh heaven for him when the reluctant get turned on to cooking and get with the program. Like Luis, for example, who discovered he loved to cook only after enrolling in the class last semester. Or like the former window-smashing culinary star August and like Richard, the other culinary star and contest winner who plans to be an executive chef.

“I didn’t choose this class, they gave it to me,” says Richard. “To tell the truth, I wasn’t really into it. And then this man, Mr. Espinosa, saw something in me, a talent he didn’t often see. It’s indescribable, what happened, but I developed a passion, a real passion for cooking.”

Like his classmates, Richard is well-versed in the flavors of Latin food and Chinese food, savored at either the family table or restaurants or from takeout windows across the hood.

It was not Espinosa’s own genetic fusion or familiarity with the great culinary traditions of the Japanese and Mexicans that gave birth to a cuisine the kids dub LatAsian.

The idea came from the kids themselves after two weeks of research and a class consensus. Although food snobs may get their Chinese takeout on the sly, no one can dispute that egg rolls, sweet-and-sour chicken and shrimp lo mein have their own cachet. Combine that with the robust spicy flavors of the neighborhood’s Latin food, experiment, make it work, make it healthy and nutritious, and you have a winner.

It was a LatAsian dish, in fact, Chicken Ayala Marsala with Shiitake Mushrooms, that won Richard his prize in the citywide culinary competition.

But that isn’t the only thing that’s putting a smile on his face these days. And chopping onions isn’t the only thing that brings water to his eyes.

“This man, David Espinosa, he’s a second father to me,” Richard says. “He and my father are friends. When I go home I have a father and when I come to school I have a father.

“David is joyful. He is humble. He does so many things he doesn’t need to do that it brings me to tears.”