This Thanksgiving, meet the people who run Central Library's café and get a peak into their kitchen on the Library's third floor, where fourteen students speaking seven different language meet every day. This episode is a collaboration with Emma's Torch, a workforce development program that empowers refugees through the culinary arts and job placement services.
Want to learn more about the topics brought up in this episode? Check out the following links:
- Read more about Emma's Torch. You can always visit their café at Central Library or their restaurant in Carrol Gardens.
- Join our Community Cooking series, including live cooking demos, new recipes, and other food-related classes.
- From cranberries to pumpkins to turkey, learn about the "Surprisingly Local Roots of Classic Thanksgiving Dishes" in our recent blog post.
- Stumped on what to cook this year? BPL's Off the Shelf blog reviewed several cook books in our "Cooking for Crowds" post in 2019.
- Our children's specialists put together a few resources for talking to young people about the true history of Thanksgiving.
Episode Transcript
Nick Wells This is some good ASMR … [Sound of cabbage being squeezed, laughter]
Virginia Marshall What is this here? What are you making?
Nick Wells We’re doing an enormous cole slaw tomorrow. So, we have a bunch of julienned cabbage here, just lightly salted to pull some of the moisture out and just consolidate the flavor a little bit.
Virginia Marshall So this is sort of a new skill you’re teaching students?
Nick Wells I thought so. And I was walking them through it and they were like, yeah we’re do this all the time. [Laughs]
Krissa Corbett Cavouras That’s our producer Virginia talking with Nick, the sous-chef at Central Library’s café.
Adwoa Adusei You may have walked by it or even ordered food from our café, which is run by Emma’s Torch, a workforce development program that empowers refugees through the culinary arts and job placement services.
Nick Wells So the name is cauliflower. It looks a lot like broccoli … very similar. But the flavor is a little bit more crunchy?
Adwoa Adusei Nick is talking to three culinary students who are refugees from West Africa: Bintou, Mariama, and Marietou. And Nick is finally able to teach a new skill: This is their first time encountering cauliflower. Marietou tastes it and makes a face.
Marietou Bah [Laughs] Yes, it’s good.
Nick Wells For me I like it in the oven. When you boil it ...
Krissa Corbett Cavouras As a Thanksgiving special, we’re bringing you an audio postcard from Brooklyn Public Library and Emma’s Torch, which is named for Emma Lazarus, the nineteenth-century poet and activist for refugees. Her poem, “The New Colossus,” is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. I’m Krissa Corbett Cavouras.
Adwoa Adusei And I’m Adwoa Adusei. You’re listening to Borrowed: stories that start at the library.
[Music]
(Gregg Richards, Brooklyn Public Library)
Adwoa Adusei Back in the Library kitchen with Chef Nick, food prep begins …
Nick Wells We’re going to be getting a little bit of work done for family meal. Family meal is kind of an old-school restaurant tradition of everyone sitting down at the same time. The way that family meal works here is we have a classroom upstairs. Students and myself get family meal cooked down here to serve around 11:30 in the afternoon. It’s a really fun opportunity to play around with different techniques that normally aren’t used in a baking kitchen. So, how to cook protein, all of these different vegetable preparations, that sort of thing.
[Talking to students: Anything that's a little more brown, take away ...]
Krissa Corbett Cavouras Nick shows Marietou how to prepare the cauliflower, and then Marietou explains the process in Fulani to Mariama and Bintou.
[Marietou Bah speaks in Fulani]
Mariama Bah My name is Bah Mariama and I’m from Guinea.
Bintou Diallo My name is Bintou Diallo, I’m from Guinea, too. We are working with Chef Nick and we are learning about baking. We made a lot of things that the front of house can sell. So, we made chocolate chip cookies, blueberry muffin, brownie, hummus wrap, bagel, something like that. So we make a lot of things with Chef Nick.
Nick Wells It’s crazy having folks from all over the world bring their own culture and their own sense of Identity through food into this space. Trying to figure out how to incorporate that into our menus has been really exciting. Every cohort we play "let's make a soup," and it’s your day to put something on the menu and it’s going to run for the next couple of weeks. We’ve had a lot of hits come out of that. That’s been something that everyone is intimidated to do at first until they get going and then ...
Staff member Order in.
Nick Wells Sorry just one second. Yeah, listening.
Staff member Roast beef wrap, please.
Nick Wells Yeah, absolutely. Hand please, thanks. Yeah, really ... the list could go on and on. But just bringing all of these food cultures into the same place and learning from each other, not just me but all the students as well.
Adwoa Adusei Upstairs, in a secret kitchen on the the third floor of Central Library, fourteen Emma’s Torch students are learning professional interview skills from Ellie, the program associate, so that they can apply for jobs in the food industry after they graduate from the training program.
Ellie Pfeiffer So you’re introducing yourself in the context, thinking about a job. So you’ll say your title of your current role. What is everyone's current role?
Sierra Murray So we accept our students and then they are enrolled for an eleven-week program.
Krissa Corbett Cavouras That’s Sierra Murray, the program director at Emma’s Torch
Sierra Murray The first half of the program, they are in our classroom at the Brooklyn Public Library, where they’re learning digital literacy, they're learning English, they're learning conflict resolution, and knife skills, and all of the things you need to be successful in work and in a kitchen outside of necessarily working with hot pans, or whatever it is. And then from there, they transition into our service portion, where they work at our café at the Brooklyn Public Library or our restaurant in Carroll Gardens.
Ellie Pfeiffer What is someone good at here? Someone give me an example … cooking, okay. Cooking is a really big thing and we know you're good at cooking because that's why we're here. Why should someone make you a member of their team? Josephine.
Josephine Jehru I’m hard-working.
Ellie Pfeiffer Hard-working, right? You might say …
Adwoa Adusei Ellie is speaking slowly and clearly because there are at least seven different native languages in the room, including Spanish, English, French, Haitian Creole, Swahili, Fula, and Burmese. Some of the students are looking at their phone screens, where their translation apps are able to turn Ellie’s real-time instruction into text they can read.
Sierra Murray One of the things that has been new since 2021, really, has been a new emphasis on digital skills, and especially addressing the digital divide with our students who typically don’t have access to things like knowing how to send a professional email or even WIFi at home. So we have laptops and Brooklyn Public Library helps us train our students in professional emails and digital literacy overall, which is new and has been really exciting and has had a really great yield on professional communication with employers and things like that. We also have, because we are at the Brooklyn Public Library, we do lessons on things like finding cookbooks. So, finding resources that you might not find in other places—you definitely won't find in not a library—and just being able to use public goods as best as you can to further your own education.
[Classroom sound]
Krissa Corbett Cavouras During class that day, Virginia walked around to hear more about the students’ backgrounds and their interests in food service and cooking.
Shanel Daley My name is Shanel Daley. I am originally from Jamaica, I currently live in Brooklyn, Coney Island to be exact. There’s just something different about being in the kitchen that makes me happy. Something that, like, when I smell a new dish or a new scent, I’m curious about what’s in it or what it tastes like, stuff like that.
Josephine Njeru So my name is Josephine Njeru, I’m originally from Kenya. So, I’ve only been here for one and a half years. I live in Brooklyn, Park Slope area. Back in my country, I had an opportunity to open a restaurant. Like, I don’t know if you would know this, but we have ugali, sukuma wiki. Another dish is called kienyeji. We have roasted goat meat, which if very famous, we have kachumbari which is the salad. We have samosas, we have mandazi, it’s a lot. But unfortunately things happened, and I only had it for three months. So it’s my passion, so when I heard they are offering that, I just ran.
Wai Min Sutacaralinkara My name is Wai Min. I’m from Myanmar. Now I’m in the U.S. almost three years. Our country is located between China and India. That’s why most of our recipes are spicey, salt, and sour. My career goal is ... I want to be a chef, like, a special chef.
Benedicte Kabore Hi, I’m Benedicte. I am from Burkina Faso. I’m 23 years old. I have been in New York for seven years. Everybody have to work here. We have to work, like teamwork, we have to work together. Clean, wash the hands, plate, everything. And I like that. I don’t like to sit, like, at one place, I really like to go everywhere, talking … [laughs]
Adwoa Adusei There were a few other students from Burkina Faso who were not as confident in English as Benedicte, and one of them waved her over to translate for them from French into English.
(Gregg Richards, Brooklyn Public Library)
Alizeta Kaimogo Okay, alle, boujour… Moi, je m'apelle Alizeta Kaimogo. Je viens du Burkina Faso.
Benedicte Kabore She said she’s Alizeta Kaimogo. She’s from Burkina Faso.
Alizeta Kaimogo Je suis content d'être ici parce que por moi ...
Benedicte Kabore She said she’s happy to be here because it can be good for her career.
Ellie Pfeiffer Okay, family meal time! Go downstairs to clock out for break …
Krissa Corbett Cavouras The students break for lunch, or family meal, which was made by Bintou and Mariama that day, the two students from Guinea who we met earlier. They made garlic rice with broccoli and chicken — and clearly, the two chefs are very skilled. Tania, from Mexico, was standing by the food, serving herself a portion. She said she didn’t know the name of the dish, but that it tasted amazing.
Tania Morales ... no me sé los nombres de la comida ... sabe muy bueno!
Adwoa Adusei Over at one of the tables, Benedicte and Josephine talked about Thanksgiving as they ate.
Josephine Njeru Last year was my first Thanksgiving here. It was amazing. The love, the joy that comes with Thanksgiving, it’s just like Christmas comes early, so I’m looking forward to it. I already have a few invites from my friends who live in Park Slope.
Benedicte Kabore For Thanksgiving, I cook with my mom. … she always do it with ... she put the… how do you call the meat from Thanksgiving? Turkey. Yes, big turkey here, and put the salad next to it. With the juice, we can make banana juice.
Krissa Corbett Cavouras Javier, from El Salvador, had only been in the U.S. for a few months, and he’s looking forward to the holidays. Ellie helped translate for him.
Javier Guatemala Sí, sería mi primera vez pasar este Día de Acción de Gracias. Tengo un poco conocimiento como es ...
Ellie Pfeiffer Javier was just saying that he has not spent a Thanksgiving here in the United States, so he's excited for his first one. And then also excited for the snow because he's never experienced snow before. So, getting to see snow and spent the winter here...
[Music]
Krissa Corbett Cavouras And before we go, we want to acknowledge that the story we tell about Thanksgiving is false and the real story of European colonization of this land caused untold harm. But what endures about this holiday it is that people can come together to enjoy food and bring their own traditions to the table, so that every American — new and old — makes it their own.
Adwoa Adusei So, whether it’s your first Thanksgiving in the U.S. or your ninetieth—whether it snows, whether you drink banana juice with your turkey or whatever other traditions you have … we hope you get to enjoy a meal with family and friends, new and old.
[Music]
Krissa Corbett Cavouras This episode was produced and written by Virginia Marshall, with help from Ali Post, Fritzi Bodenheimer, Jennifer Proffitt and Robin Lester Kenton. Our music composer is Billy Libby. Meryl Friedman designed our logo.
Adwoa Adusei Borrowed is brought to you by Brooklyn Public Library and is hosted by me and Krissa Corbett Cavouras. You can find a transcript on our website: BKLYN Library [dot] org [slash] podcasts.