Chef Alon Shaya: It Was Cooking That Made Me Embrace Being Jewish

Even though I was born in Israel, grew up with a religious mother, and went to a high school where the majority of students were Jewish, somehow, by the time I started college at the Culinary Institute of America, I didn’t really know much about Jewish food. That became especially obvious when some friends and I decided to start a Jewish Culture Club at school, the first in the CIA’s history.

Let me back up. When I began school there, I was still a little bit awestruck that I was even at the CIA. I’d been accepted (and had been able to afford to go) thanks in large part to the perseverance of mentors like my high school home-ec teacher Donna, who helped me and my mom sort out scholarship applications and financial-aid forms. To me, the CIA was like a culinary Harvard. Its main building was an old and regal brick monastery on a campus in New York’s Hudson Valley, dotted with apple orchards. Teachers here were called “chefs,” and, unlike nearly all of my high-school teachers, none of them avoided eye contact with me when I passed them in the hallways. On one of our first nights on campus, new students were invited to the house of the college president, Ferdinand Metz. He asked our group of aspiring chefs, “What’s the best kind of apple to use in an apple pie?” Other students called out answers; none of them were what he was looking for. I raised my hand and suggested that it took three different kinds of apples for different layers of flavor and texture. I got it right! I was so excited that I called Donna collect the next day to tell her.

Continue reading "Chef Alon Shaya: It Was Cooking That Made Me Embrace Being Jewish" at...