Politically Incorrect
A cooking class that doesn’t follow the norm
Cooking classes run the gamut, and there is one for almost every palate these days.
Home cooks get lessons in making high-end truffles and homespun pierogies. Professional chefs demystify roasting and braising techniques, bakers demonstrate the art of crimping and frosting, and schools such as Chatham University offer introductory lessons to bread making and butchering. They all are structured and follow guidelines — for the most part.
Now an unorthodox cooking class is joining that mix, and it advocates being politically incorrect, asking “stupid” questions and making mistakes.
Chef patron Gaetano Ascione is launching the Politically Incorrect Cooking Academy classes at his French restaurant, Jean Louis, in Dormont on April 1.
“With so many cooking classes in the Pittsburgh area, I wanted to offer something different,” he says.
The classes won’t follow the traditional appetizer, main course and dessert format. Nor will they have a title that indicates what will be prepared. Instead, fish, meat, vegetables, dairy and pasta will be the broad topics every week. No preplanned menu will be chalked out, and students won’t get a printed recipe. The classes will be open-ended, the dish to be prepared will be decided in real time, and the recipe will be developed as the evening progresses.
“Students will spend time in the kitchen and experience the life of a chef for one day,” Mr. Ascione explains. “They are going to do the same thing I do everyday. They will open the refrigerator and prepare something with what is inside. And everything will be made from scratch.”
So they won’t know ahead of time whether the class will feature coq au vin, classic French onion soup, beef bourguignon, escargot, or if it will simply be about tomatoes. If it is tomatoes, it won’t be just about making a proper tomato salad. Mr. Ascione also will talk about where the tomatoes came from and how they can be grilled, stewed, baked or magically be the basis for a marmalade. He wants people to leave the class understanding the many ways to use an ingredient and with new ideas.
“Like they say, if I give you a
fish, I feed you for one day. But if I teach you how to fish, I feed you for your whole life,” he explains.
The classes won’t stop with cooking lessons, however. He also wants to establish a relationship with the community by being transparent and showing people what really takes place in his kitchen.
“When customers come in for a dinner, they know what is on the plate, but I want them to know what went into the preparation for it to turn out like that. I want them to see what kind of oil or fish I use, or how healthy or not it is,” he says. “Whatever they see in the kitchen will be a reflection of what they eat.”
He encourages his students to ask any questions that cross their minds, even if they feel it is stupid. If something went horribly wrong when a student was trying to cook at home, he wants to know about it, so that he can show the class the correct way of doing it. And he is open to learning from his students and adopting their ideas and techniques in his kitchen.
Mr. Ascione assures there will be plenty of hands-on experience as he is planning to accept only six to eight students for each class, which costs $120. It will be held every Monday, starting at 4 p.m. and lasting for about three to three-and-a-half hours.
“We will have a glass of wine, a glass of prosecco and in the end will sit down together for an amicable dinner,” he says.
In keeping with the especial class setting, interested students can call the chef on his mobile phone at 1-786512-5310 to make reservations. However, he says, he reserves the right to decide who gets accepted.
“It is after all a politically incorrect class,” he says, half-joking.
He first experimented with the politically incorrect concept while working in Singapore when he had the TV show, “Politically Incorrect Cooking.”
“I was known as the Mel Brooks of cooking as I used to make fun of everything,” he says. “When I open the oven door and see that the souffle has not come out properly, I would say, ‘Oh [expletive],’ and they would bleep me.”
His fans would write to him saying that unlike other shows where everything came out perfectly, he made them feel normal with the mistakes he made.
“I would say I’m not Mother Teresa. I make mistakes,” he recalls.
Mr. Ascione’s globe-trotting career started off on the Amalfi Coast in Italy, where he was raised, and has taken him to Germany, England, the Bahamas, South Africa, South Korea, Singapore and the United States. He has taught at the Culinary Institute of America and Johnson & Wales University, had restaurants in Miami and Chicago and worked in Washington, D.C.
While working in South Africa, he prepared the inaugural dinner for President Nelson Mandela in 1994. He remembers the date — May 10 — because it also was his birthday and the guests at the table — “the president’s clerk, the Supreme Court judge and the jailor who was supposed to shoot him if he tried to walk out. That was a moment seeing all them at the same table.”
At the end of the dinner, he says he was summoned by Mr. Mandela who didn’t want the mousse with alcohol-soaked marasca cherries.
“He said, ‘Chef this is beautiful but I’m an old man and cannot eat this rich mousse. Can I have some strawberries?’
“I said, ‘Mr. President, you are the president. You can have all the strawberries.’”
“He said. ‘No, I just want a dozen.’”
“There will never be another Mandela in the world. He was so humble and deserves all the respect,” Mr. Ascione says.
He has also cooked for presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan at The George Town Club in Washington, D.C., and got to meet Mr. Reagan up close in the White House.
“He said, ‘Young man, how have you been.’
“I said, ‘Mr. President, I have cooked for you. I used to work at The George Town Club.’
“He said, ‘I remember.’ “He didn’t, but he made me feel good. He was such a nice person.”
When he first moved to Pittsburgh last year, he worked at The Pennsylvania Market in the Strip District. But things didn’t work the way he wanted them to, he says, and so he left after a couple of months and opened Jean Louis in Dormont on Dec. 18.
Next month, he is expanding the hours, and the restaurant will be open for breakfast from 8:30 to 11 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays and for brunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays. Lunch is 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, and dinner is 4 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and open an hour later on Fridays and Saturdays.
So why did someone who was born and raised in Italy gravitate toward opening a French restaurant in Pittsburgh?
“Why not Pittsburgh?,” he replies, adding he was curious about the city and intrigued by the nearby lamb farms and varieties of mushrooms available in Western Pennsylvania.
Going the French route was not something he pulled out of a hat, he explains, because when he first started cooking in Italy, most of the restaurants had French leanings when it came to the techniques used and language spoken in the kitchen.
“The chefs, who were then trained in France, would require everybody to speak in French,” he says.
He named the Dormont restaurant Jean Louis after his mentor, the late Jean Louis Palladin, for whom he worked as a stagiaire, or trainee, in Washington, D.C.
“The man was a genius when it came to making foie gras and pate. And he taught Americans how to use scallops and monkfish, which were not in vogue in kitchens at that time.”
Mr. Ascione believes a dish is not about the recipe but more about the ingredient. If you focus on the ingredient, he says, you can put together a dish that will be well appreciated.
He wants to share that philosophy at his cooking classes, where he hopes the students will be able to relish the joy of life. Or like the French would say, “Joie de vivre.”