Watch out Emeril! Teens raise money for New Orleans cooking school, hope for culinary stardom

Future chefs help raise money for cooking school

NEW ORLEANS — Chayil Johnson was thinking of applying to the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts for the music program. After all, the 13-year old plays the saxophone and piano, and NOCCA has turned out such noted musicians as Harry Connick Jr., Trombone Shorty and the Marsalis brothers.

But a three-week culinary camp sponsored by the school this summer put Johnson on a different career path. He decided hot dishes suited him more than cool rhythms.

“I love jazz,” Johnson said. “But I just feel I’m more creative in the kitchen.”

Music’s loss may be the gourmet’s gain.

Johnson, along with Victoria Farmer, 14, and Janee Taylor, 17, dreamed up dishes that will appear in all of Emeril Lagasse’s restaurants in October.

“This is really incredible,” Lagasse said Friday, after he, Leah Chase and Poppy Tooker spent lunch trying to select one of the youngsters’ creations to go on Lagasse’s menus. “These are dishes that are well-researched, beautifully cooked and presented, and that we will prepare and serve just as you see them.”

The three were finalists in a contest to see who could come up with the one dish Lagasse would serve. But the judges were stumped after tasting Farmer’s Creole Rabbit with Roasted Butternut Squash & Spicy Corncakes; Johnson’s Apricot Glazed Roasted Duck with Butternut Squash Risotto; and Taylor’s Louisiana Surf and Turf — Grilled Ribeye, Seafood Mashed Potatoes and Cajun Crab Boiled Asparagus.

All three dishes will be served next month.

“They are original ideas and excellent dishes,” Lagasse said after declaring the contest a three-way tie. “We’re putting all three on the menu.”

Lagasse says the dishes will make a difference. Each time he sells one of them, $10 will go to Lagasse’s foundation to help fund a new culinary arts kitchen at NOCCA. Lagasse also announced that he will donate $100,000 to funding a four-year culinary arts program at the school. His foundation has already donated more than $500,000 to that cause.

“This is what I want to do, get these young kids and show them a wonderful world that is waiting for them,” Lagasse said.

NOCCA, a high school devoted to the creative arts, offers intensive training in dance, music, writing, theater, visual arts, and beginning next year, culinary crafts.

“What we do here has a strong relationship with the culture of the area around us,” said Kyle Wedberg, President and CEO of NOCCA. “And our food and its preparation — just like our music — is a big part of our culture.”

Indeed, all three of the budding chefs cooking in Emeril’s test kitchen grew up cooking with family members.

“I always cook with my grandmother and my parents,” Farmer said. “Since I was about 5 or 6, we’re in the kitchen together all the time.”

NOCCA has offered culinary camps in the summer for the past four years. Four students apply for each slot, Wedberg said.

“Chefs are the new rock stars,” Wedberg said. “The kids all see them on television, and if they like to cook, they want to be like them.”

The school will start with a two-year course and expand to a four-year curriculum. The graduates will not only know their way around a kitchen, Wedberg said. They will also learn the technical aspects of running a kitchen and a restaurant, managing finances and understanding the business part of their dream restaurants.

And just as the musicians, artists, dancers and actors do, applicants will have to audition. And, just as in the other disciplines, the culinary students will have to keep their grades up, as well as their pots simmering.

Taylor, who is graduating this year from another New Orleans high school, will not get to attend the NOCCA program, but has already charted out the type of plan the school hopes to see its aspiring cooks generate.

Taylor is planning to go to Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I., and get a bachelors degree from its highly regarded culinary arts program.

“Then I want to work for a good chef and learn all I can from them,” Taylor said. “While getting a master’s in business and finance. And someday, of course, I want to have my own restaurants.”

The three winning recipes will be posted on Lagasse’s foundation website.

On the Net:

www.emerils.com/emerilology/elf

nocca.com/