At Cook County Jail, kitchen gives inmates a second chance

By Janet Rausa Fuller
DNAinfo.com Chicago
May 1, 2014
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LITTLE VILLAGE — A few days a week, 20 inmates at the Cook County Jail escape to the basement of their medium-security home.

There is a kitchen down here. The floors are concrete. The walls are white. Surfaces are stainless steel, dull and spotless. There is nothing in plain sight — no colorful produce, no hunks of meat or bowls of spices — that suggests or invites the kind of happy, sloppy, aromatic cooking that brings people to the table. No distinct smells, good or bad, waft through here.

Still, for three hours at a time, this kitchen is a most welcoming place for the inmates of Division 11.

The men — a few of them just 18 and 19 years old — are students in a pilot culinary program that began in late March. Their goal for the next 90 days is to learn the skills they need to land kitchen jobs when they get out of jail, so they can stay out.

The chef in charge, Bruno Abate, owns Tocco restaurant in trendy Wicker Park, six miles and a world away from the massive jail complex near 31st Street and California Avenue.

Abate, 59, a native of Naples, Italy, is no stranger to this world behind bars. He taught a similar program at the Cook County Boot Camp last year, and before that at the Illinois Youth Center in St. Charles.

He knows his limitations. This is not culinary school. Knowing a brunoise from a baton cut doesn’t matter much here. But, he said, it will be an education.

For the first class, Abate went over kitchen safety and sanitation rules and brought out fragrant bunches of rosemary, thyme, basil and sage. Most of the men hadn’t seen or smelled fresh herbs before.

“I always thought it was fancy stuff for restaurants,” one inmate said.

“In three months, I can’t do miracles,” Abate said. “My mission is to transfer to them the love of food. Not everyone wants to be a chef. But if you have the love of food, you have the love of life.”

Zero tolerance

On a Tuesday morning, the inmates, wearing white chef jackets and hats — leftovers from the boot camp cooking program — stood at a long work table, each facing a ball of pizza dough made the previous day.

Abate wanted them to get a feel for the dough, to stretch it and work it into a circle. It didn’t have to be perfect. It wasn’t perfect. The dough was tearing all over. Abate said they might have used too much yeast or let the dough sit too long out of the cooler. They would make more and try again.

Cooking can be forgiving. But when it comes to discipline, there are no do-overs in the program.

“It’s zero-tolerance. One screw-up, one incident, and they’re out,” said Ben Breit, director of communications for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.

Each inmate was vetted in a three-week process overseen by Lt. D. Delitz, a 19-year veteran of the jail and the group’s mother hen. She has three boys of her own.

Out of more than 70 inmates interviewed, 24 were chosen. The class is now down to 20 because four were sent to state prison.

None have been charged with a violent crime or have gang affiliations. All are serving at least 90-day sentences. And they all have to be serious about cooking and change, and to explain that in written essays as part of the application process.

Delitz also chose the officers who bring the inmates from their cells down to the kitchen and watch over them during class.

Knives, if and when they are used, are tethered to work tables. The handwritten name tags pinned to their white jackets are removed and collected at the end of class before they return to their cells.

“You should see some of what’s been turned into a weapon. You’d be surprised at the creativity,” Breit said.

Still, said Delitz, “I’m pretty confident in the group we have.”

Participation is a privilege. These men know it.

“I got blessed. I was in the right place at the right time. I’m just taking advantage of everything I can and making it positive,” said Timothy, 29, a father of two girls. It’s his fifth stint behind bars — DUI and driving on a suspended license this time — and his first in a program like this.

Jerry, 31, is trying to get back to where he had been, managing a Papa John’s pizza shop, before drugs landed him in Division 11.

“The people I worked for really want me to come back,” he said. “I’m here to learn more about the food business. It’s a great opportunity for me.”

Abate brings the ingredients for each lesson. He had to call in a favor for a donated stove. The only other stove is in a smaller room separate from the main kitchen, not ideal for his lessons.

In the first few weeks, they’ve made pasta, pizza, focaccia, gnocchi and panzerotti — from scratch, by hand. Once Abate gets permission from the jail, he plans to bring in an iron to teach them how to press their chef jackets.

“Those jackets have to stay clean,” he told them.

Hands-on learning

At 6-foot-5, Abate towers over the group. He is every bit Italian, from his thick accent and tinted glasses to the way he talks with his hands.

He peppers his speech with “garbage” and “bulls—.” As in: American pizza and Popeye’s fried chicken — garbage. Fancy “fusion confusion” cooking — bulls—.

Some of the men joke that they can’t understand him because of his accent. But they listen.

“I’m choosing to learn instead of sitting around doing dead time. If you can’t eat, you can’t live,” said DeAndre, 37, who longs to someday open a casual restaurant, “like a Boston Market.”

Abate gives the men reading homework from a book titled “On Cooking: A Textbook of Culinary Fundamentals.” He bought 14 copies of the book, so some of them have to share.

Delitz, who oversees Division 11’s other work programs, watches every class. She is constantly on the move, peeking over shoulders, offering an encouraging voice or a stern one, depending on the moment.

“Most of the programs are more mental, you know? But this one, you actually get to see the results. And most men … that’s the way they learn,” she said.

Delitz has taken a particular interest in a 19-year-old named Darien, who’s in on robbery charges. She calls him Baby Boy.

“I normally wouldn’t choose such a young one, but there was something about this one,” she said, watching him pat dough into a neat circle with a crimped border.

“See, he wanted us to roll it thin, but I like to be different than everybody else. I did mine with an edge,” Darien said.

There’s a grin lurking just behind his serious eyes. He said his uncle is a chef, so the kitchen is familiar territory.

“I’ve cooked fried chicken, pancakes, mashed potatoes,” he said.

Darien said he might follow in his uncle’s footsteps. But there is something else he said he’ll do first.

“Once I get out, I want to go somewhere else. A different state,” he said, smoothing his floured hands across the dough, which had begun to dry out. “The farther you go, the less people you know. I got in with the wrong people.”

The elusive job

Time drags inside Division 11, but once you’re out, the clock is ticking. Go back to the old neighborhood and fall in with the same crowd, and you’ll likely end up back in jail, or worse.

“It becomes a vicious cycle,” Breit said.

Criminal justice experts say the first few weeks after release are crucial. A 2008 paper by the nonprofit Urban Institute cites research that found the likelihood of violations and re-arrests in that first month to be almost double that of the 15th month.

Employment is critical to staying out of trouble, experts say. But it is no guarantee, and easier said than done. The stain of a criminal record is too deep for many potential employers to look past. Often the interview is over before it even begins.

Within this complicated climate, there has been a growing emphasis on job-training programs and services as a strategy to reduce unemployment as well as recidivism, said Hank Rosen, policy analyst at the nonprofit Council of State Governments Justice Center.

Programs have diversified to include more unique approaches such as community gardening. These, along with vocational training, work release and prison industries, are now “wildly popular” in prisons and jails, Rosen said.

The corrections field also is “getting smarter at how it structures and delivers rehabilitative services to reduce the likelihood someone will re-offend at release,” he said.

In other words, they aren’t for every inmate. Research has shown that those deemed “high-risk” benefit the most from intensive programs that nurture job readiness as well as behavioral change. Their low-risk peers, on the other hand, might actually be worse off in such settings.

Growing hope

The programs at Cook County Jail read like a Discovery Center catalog: barber school, guitar, parenting. Volunteers like Abate run them at no cost to the county. There are anger management classes and others related to health and well-being, too.

“Every hour they’re doing something. That’s my goal, to keep them continuously busy,” Delitz said.

The jail’s gardening program, run since 1993 with the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service, might be its most well known and visible (literally — you can see it from California Avenue). Inmates maintain the garden and can earn master gardener certification. Last summer, they built a home for their newest residents, chickens. The produce goes to some of Chicago’s top restaurants.

The barber program, started in 2012 in partnership with Larry’s Barber College, a leading Chicago school, recently expanded to Division 11. It’s a big deal. Inmates who successfully complete instruction and testing will be licensed to cut hair in Illinois.

Delitz and her staff are constantly refining the jail’s network of services. Her plan is to expand the culinary program from three-hour sessions to eight hours.

She has other ideas: an incentive program, for example, to reward good behavior in Division 11 with food cooked by inmates in the culinary program. Abate wants his students to eventually produce pasta and other foods that could be sold on store shelves.

A push forward

Several weeks ago, a former Division 11 inmate started a new job washing dishes at Tocco, Abate’s restaurant.

“That’s where people have to start,” Abate said. “That’s where they prove to me they want to change their lives.”

Of course, he can’t hire everyone who passes through the class, but he said he will make calls on their behalf. The food service industry is always in need of hard workers and more accepting than others of someone with marks on his record.

Abate doesn’t bother asking his students about the past.

“It’s none of my business to ask,” he said.

They likely don’t know his back story, either — why he spends this time with them every week.

About four years ago, Abate’s daughter befriended a woman whose dad killed her mom. The dad was sentenced to Due Palazzi, a prison near Padua, Italy.

The prison is famous in Italy for its award-winning bakery, Pasticceria Giotto, where inmates bake and sell thousands of loaves of panettone, a sweet bread, and other pastries.

The story stuck with Abate. Around this time, he said he remembers watching a TV program about incarcerated youth, some as young as 14. It was unsettling.

“Something told me, ‘Hey, you need to do something.’ God maybe pushed me,” he said.

Abate doesn’t have a strict lesson plan for his program at Division 11, except to teach them how to cook and appreciate real food, the kind he grew up eating, the kind he believes everyone deserves.

For the pizza dough class, he brought in a wooden pizza peel and had them take turns sliding it under their rolled-out dough. While they worked, he urged them to stay away from processed foods like hot dogs.

“Olive oil,” he announced, holding up a slim bottle he’d brought from the restaurant. “This will save your life forever.”

It just might.

A lotsa pasta: Italian Village to celebrate 80 ‘very nice’ years

By Janet Rausa Fuller
Chicago Sun-Times
March 12, 2007

Plastic spoon in hand, Frank Capitanini dipped into sauces simmering in the kitchen of the Italian Village.

“Very nice, very nice,” he said, nodding to the cooks moving around him.

This is a four-day-a-week exercise for Capitanini, 74. He wants to make sure each spoonful tastes exactly as it should — exactly how his father, Alfredo Capitanini, the restaurant’s late founder, had done it.

The Village, thought to be Chicago’s oldest Italian restaurant, turns 80 this year. For the Capitanini family, three generations of whom have shepherded it through the decades, the motto seems to be this: Change with the times. But not too much.

Secret to longevity

The building at 71 W. Monroe — actually three restaurants under one roof — offers carryout and delivery and recently started doing room service for the nearby Hampton Majestic hotel. They produce a line of pasta sauces sold at Whole Foods and Sunset Foods stores. But the twinkling lights and frescoed walls of the upstairs Village are of a different era.

“It’s like a chocolate chip cookie,” said Gina Capitanini, 48, Frank’s daughter and Alfredo’s granddaughter who now runs the place with her brother, Al Capitanini, 44. “Why put cinnamon in it if it doesn’t need it?”

Italian immigrant Alfredo Capitanini opened the Italian Village in 1927, using a cigar box as his cash register. In 1955, he opened a second restaurant, La Cantina, in the basement.

Business hit a low after the 1968 race riots sparked by Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, said Frank’s brother, Ray Capitanini.

“We came out the door and looked west and saw all the fires,” Ray said. “Nobody came downtown after that.”

But they dug in and held on, and customers came back. Sons Frank and Ray made their mark in 1961 with the opening of the upscale Florentine Room on the main floor. In 1990, it was grandchildren Al and Gina’s turn, with the makeover of the Florentine Room into Vivere.

Gathered around a platter of biscotti in a cozy nook of the second-floor Village, the Capitaninis talk in rapid-fire succession about lasting in an industry where failure often comes in the first three years.

“We show up every day to work,” Ray said.

“We put the customer first,” Gina said.

“There’s always a Capitanini here,” said Al’s wife, Pam.

The next generation

There have been menu flops through the years — frog legs, tripe, ribs. But chicken Alfredo and cannelloni — both Alfredo Capitanini creations, according to the family — remain. The recipes haven’t changed.

Some waiters have been around so long they are assigned to only one table. “With a captain backup,” Al laughed.

The captains, as it happens, wear tuxedos and bow ties.

There’s a fourth generation of Capitaninis coming up. Al and Gina’s children are too young yet, but Gina’s 12-year-old daughter wants to take cooking classes at Kendall College.

Starting from scratch

By Janet Rausa Fuller
Chicago Sun-Times
June 8, 2011
Link to article

“I’m thinking if this works,” says Mary Jane Tala, not two minutes into her first cooking lesson, “the Cubs are gonna win the World Series.”

Translation: If Tala — a Lean Cuisine devotee who went 15 years before turning on the oven in her Near North condo — can learn how to cook in six weeks, anything is possible.

In May, Sun-Times readers chose the 57-year-old accountant as our guinea pig for a culinary makeover under the guidance of chef John Bubala.

Our goal: to show Tala that cooking is not to be feared or dismissed as mysterious or too much of a bother. By familiarizing her with her postage stamp-size kitchen and getting her hands dirty, we’ll get it done.

Our lessons are once a week, two hours at a time. We’re halfway through our experiment. Tala has done the bulk of the chopping. She’s shelled fava beans, cut corn off the cob and sliced an eggplant, all for the first time.

Bubala did step in to cut up a chicken and peel and de-vein shrimp. Tala couldn’t bring herself to do that, not just yet. The shrimp look like “giant insects” and the chicken “sounds slippery,” she grimaces.

Chicken, the world’s most popular protein, is part of our first lesson. One chicken can produce multiple meals. The other part, at Tala’s request, is gazpacho. It is one of her favorite things to eat. And it is, she now knows, the easiest thing to make.

Square one

Everyone in Tala’s family can cook. But she never learned and just didn’t bother when she was married, because her then-husband was a fantastic cook.

It seems to make more sense to stock up on frozen meals and ready-to-eat foods, or go out to eat, or stick with salad and bottled dressing.

“If you are what you eat, I’m going to live to be 120, because I am preservatives,” Tala says.

The upside: Tala has been on a health kick ever since her appendectomy last fall. She hasn’t smoked a cigarette in eight months. She walks to work. She has discovered Pilates. Learning to make wholesome meals is the next natural step, and she’s eager to learn.

In her freezer: Lean Cuisines, low-fat ice cream, frozen fruit bars, frozen daquiri mix and a loaf of oat bread. In the refrigerator: juice, milk, a pitcher of Crystal Light, jarred spaghetti sauce, fat-free salad dressing, yogurt and two bottles of Chardonnay.

Her kitchen measures roughly 6 feet by 10 feet. A plaque on the wall reads, “Everybody has to believe in something. I believe I’ll open a bottle of wine.”

Bubala has his work cut out for him.

“Do you have butter in the fridge?” he asks.

“I have I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter,” Tala replies as Bubala shoots me a wary look. “Honey, I cut out trans fats.”

She owns two knives and three pans. The pantry is dicier — no salt, no pepper, a bottle of oil with a label that looks about eight years past its expiration date. Bubala cheated a little, bringing his own knives. But, he tells her, a tricked-out kitchen loaded with shiny gadgets isn’t necessary if all you want to do is make dinner.

“I never buy my knives new. I buy them used,” from Northwestern Cutlery at 810 W. Lake, he says.

Tala does have a shiny blender, which is all she needs to make gazpacho. And her 8-inch skillet, though not a natural choice for making soup, is the largest one she owns, so that’s what we’re going to use.

Wait to salt

Gazpacho takes only a few minutes, so the chicken is first up. Always start with whatever takes longest to cook, Bubala says.

He keeps a plastic bag within reach for scraps. Cleaning as you cook is a good habit to pick up.

After a shaky start (“What does one use to wash vegetables — soap?” Tala asks), Bubala has her chop a carrot, shallot and part of a fennel bulb. He shows her how to smash a head of garlic into cloves with the side of a knife — a broad spoon or the bottom of a pan also works — so the cloves are easy to peel.

The vegetables, sauteed in a bit of the questionable oil, are the base of the stock. They’re flavor-building blocks, always good to have around and they keep well in the crisper drawer.

Tala sprinkles Mrs. Dash into the pan — just a dash. “You can always add, but never take away,” Bubala says. “As the stock reduces, it gets saltier.”

He nestles chicken pieces into the pan to brown, and wraps the rest of the raw chicken in plastic wrap and foil for the freezer. Later this summer, when we are out of Tala’s life, she’ll be able to pull out the chicken, labeled as such, and make a meal, or three. Roast chicken, chicken soup, pasta with chicken . . .

The pan is sizzling. Tala pours in cold water to cover the chicken and turns up the heat to bring it to a boil, then back down to a simmer. Bubala shows her how to skim impurities from the top with a spoon.

She’s cooking now.

Two soups

Tala gingerly chops a tomato and other vegetables for gazpacho. The cuts don’t have to be perfect, since everything will get pureed.

The cuts don’t have to be perfect, period (but the thumb and fingertips of her free hand have to stay tucked in while she chops.) “You have to do what makes sense for you,” Bubala says.

In the blender they go, with some flat-leaf parsley, basil and cilantro leaves and the juice of a lime. Rolling the lime on the cutting board primes the juices — and momentarily transports Tala to her bartending days at the old Playboy Hotel. A whir in the blender and, voila, gazpacho. It’s soup, but it could be a sauce or marinade, too.

Bubala seasons it, and Tala tastes. “You can taste every little thingy we put in there,” she marvels.

Since she quit smoking, Tala says her palate has become more attuned to how salty, or not salty, foods are.

After 30 minutes, it’s time to pull the chicken from the pot, the meat off the bone and strain the broth, then combine the meat, broth and vegetables in a bowl. Chicken soup — done.

Dressing down

The day before our next lesson, Tala sends this e-mail: “Due to an experiment, I now have red wine vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, black pepper, celery and freeze-dried chives (couldn’t find fresh).”

She has made gazpacho again using a recipe she found online, and it’s sprightlier than the first version, though she grumbles, “The recipe said 15 minutes, but it was more like one hour with all that chopping.”

Bubala has brought two lovely cod fillets plus salad fixings, including sun-dried tomatoes, olives, balsamic vinegar and baby spinach. I have kosher salt, black pepper (with a built-in grinder), more olive oil and butter. The pantry is now stocked.

Tala eats salads often. Homemade vinaigrette is a must.

The typical ratio, Bubala says, is three or four parts oil to one part vinegar, “but it all depends on your palate.” The biggest mistake is adding salt at the wrong time. “Add the salt to the vinegar. If you add it after the oil, the salt won’t dissolve and it’ll just taste salty,” he says.

Tala stirs a pinch of salt into 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar, then measures out 1 cup of olive oil. She adds a bit of chopped garlic and shallot. A few seconds and a few turns of a spoon is all it takes.

Variations are plentiful — add chopped herbs, use different vinegars, whisk in feta or grated Parmesan. For a true emulsion, whisk in a dab of mustard.

Fish, quickly

The dressing comes in handy for our second dish — fish a la microwave. Microwave cooking can be overlooked, but it’s ideal for solo cooks such as Tala. Cleanup is minimal, and it doesn’t stink up the place. It just takes a watchful eye.

Vegetable prep is first: scallion bottoms, thin slices of ginger root and lemon, some of last week’s fennel, julienned. Fish prep comes last. “Always do your raw product first or last, never in the middle,” Bubala says.

He shows how to check for stray bones, running his fingers along the fillet. “Never leave the fish house without your fish on ice,” he cautions. “You want to keep the fish as cold as possible until you get home.”

He lays the aromatics and a plump sprig of oregano on top of the cod, then splashes it with white wine and some vinaigrette. Plastic wrap over the fish will help create steam.

Tala’s microwave is old-school — no rotating tray — but after four minutes on high and a rotation halfway through, the fish is opaque, as it should be.

Bubala pours the hot liquid from the fish into a small bowl, where a pat of butter waits to be whisked. The fancy term for this technique is monte au beurre. Butter sauce, baby.

“We not only have a dish, we have art,” says Tala.

The second fillet gets cracked black pepper and more vinaigrette as its seasoning, and a few minutes in the microwave. Set on top of lightly dressed spinach and olives, it’s yet another meal.

“The dressing ended up on everything,” Tala murmurs. “And each dish is really only five ingredients,” Bubala adds.

There isn’t much to clean up, mostly ingredients to wrap up and store for next time.

“Next time,” Tala offers, “can we do scallops?”

Danny Macaroons, a N.Y. favorite, finds a place in Chicago

By Janet Rausa Fuller
DNAinfo.com Chicago
March 25, 2013
Link to article

GOLD COAST — Dan Cohen is not a pastry chef. He never liked to bake. He is not big on sweets.

One Passover during college, as a friend raved about the macaroons his family ate for the holiday, Cohen was like, “Huh?” His wasn’t a macaroon-loving family.

Yet here he is, making a career out of the chewy coconut cookie he calls “the ugly sibling” to the prettier, shinier French macaron.

Cohen, 33, is the creator and baker of Danny Macaroons, a newcomer to Chicago’s artisan food scene. His nearly 50 varieties of macaroons range from Salted Caramel, his most popular, to Spiced Pumpkin. Already a hit in New York, Cohen said he is poised to open a production facility here by early fall, “maybe sooner.”

He started in 2010, in the kitchen of his apartment in New York’s Spanish Harlem. In that time, he has gone from hand-delivering his macaroons to coffee shops to getting on the shelves at Bergdorf Goodman to supplying Fresh Direct, a New York grocery delivery service and his biggest customer yet.

His cookbook, “The Macaroon Bible,” is due out in October.

In mid-January, Cohen moved to the Gold Coast to be with his girlfriend (also his publicist), though macaroon production remains in New York. His treats have been picked up by a half-dozen restaurants and shops, including JP Graziano Grocery in the West Loop, Belly Shack in Bucktown and, just last week, The Goddess and Grocer in the Gold Coast.

Expanding to other cities — or countries — isn’t out of the question.

“I have to get to Australia. Australians love them,” Cohen said. “If you look at Google search terms for ‘macaroons’ and ‘coconut,’ the top countries are, like, Canada, the U.K., Australia and the U.S.”

“I’ve had trouble keeping them in stock,” said Jim Graziano, owner of JP Graziano, where a four-pack sells for $11. “They’re not cheap, but you get what you pay for, that’s my motto. They’re awesome. My wife loses her mind for them.”

On Saturday, an unassuming Cohen, wearing a sweatshirt and knit cap, stood at a small table inside The Goddess and Grocer, 25 E. Delaware St., a small pile of cut-up macaroons at the ready. He wasn’t quick to call out to customers, but if they happened to glance his way …

“Please, have some macaroons,” Cohen said to three shoppers. “They’re really delicious. They’re better than you think they are.”

That’s the thing about macaroons. They’re forgettable, or just plain bad.

“Most people have a relationship with coconut macaroons and coconut in general that’s really not great,” Cohen said.

And here’s the thing about Cohen: He isn’t using some cherished family recipe. After telling his mom about that macaroon conversation with his college friend, she replied, “Why don’t you make them?”

He searched online and cobbled together a bunch of recipes into one “that sounded like something I’d want to eat, because I don’t love sweets,” he said.

When his uncle’s 90-year-old mother-in-law tasted his macaroons at a Passover gathering in 2010, “She did the whole Jewish grandmother thing. ‘You should sell these,’ ” he said in his best Jewish grandmother voice.

Two weeks later, he took a batch to his favorite cafe, intent on bartering them for coffee. Instead, they wanted to sell them. It wasn’t long before he left his job at a software startup and began baking full time.

He’s since refined his five-ingredient base recipe. His macaroons are at once crispy and chewy, not cloying or fake-tasting.

“It’s way cheaper to use artificial coconut flavoring, or sub in flour for some coconut,” Cohen said. “I don’t do anything other than not cut corners.”

Marcy Meckler, a customer at The Goddess and Grocer, could tell the difference.

“Usually, they’re so dry, no flavor,” she said, chewing on a salted caramel nubbin. “These have a lot of taste and texture to them.”

She bought a four-pack.

For all his success in such a short time, Cohen works simply. He and three employees bake by hand in 100-piece batches. He figures his hands alone have formed at least 100,000 macaroons.

He likes pushing his product face-to-face — walking into a cafe to ask if it might sell them, or handing out samples. He’ll be at the Steppenwolf Red or White Ball April 5 at Venue One, 1044 W. Randolph St.; at the April 7 Fashion Rocks benefit at bellyQ, 1400 W. Randolph St.; and at Bow Truss Coffee, 406 N. Wells St. on April 26.

The last event is a popup sale, no tickets or fancy attire required:  just a guy behind a table, with macaroons.