Patrick Reid deftly peels and chops lemon zest. The 33-year-old is comfortable working the line — that is the fast-paced, intensely-focused line of people prepping food in a restaurant kitchen. In the business, it’s all about mise en place, or having every ingredient in its place.
“If the chef wants a pound of garlic chopped in 30 seconds, you’ve got 30 seconds,” Reid says.
He graduated in March from Vancouver’s Northwest Culinary Institute and got a part-time gig at The Nines, a luxury hotel in downtown Portland that boasts multiple restaurants. But, he says, part-time work isn’t enough to afford rent. Not everything is mise en place.
For now, he lives at the downtown Vancouver men’s homeless shelter Share House. The lemon zest is going into some hummus that he’s helping prepare in the shelter’s kitchen.
Chef Barbara Curtin recently began volunteering her time and talents teaching cooking classes at Share House. None of the local shelters have done cooking classes before, said Jessica Lightheart, Share’s community relations director. When an award-winning chef offered to help out, the nonprofit saw an opportunity to build an essential life skill.
Curtin was classically trained at Paul Smith’s College in New York and spent much of her career on the East Coast. She moved here to be near family and the Portland food scene. She works as the outreach kitchen manager at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in northwest Portland — similar work to what she’s doing at Share.
“I’m done making a name for myself in the industry,” Curtin says.
Whatever food is available at the food bank typically drives what’s made in class, but this time a resident requested they make hummus. Curtin brought her food processor just for the occasion. She assigns the handful of guys that showed up for class to different tasks: chopping veggies, opening the cans of garbanzo beans, brushing pita bread with olive oil, salt and pepper. All the while she rambles off the proper way to juice a lemon or peel fresh garlic, how to use cheese cloth or stabilize a cutting board.
“When I went to school for this, if your cutting board was messy or your station was messy, the chef instructor would come over, pick everything up and throw it into the sink,” she says. Reid, dressed in his black chef jacket from the culinary institute, nods his head. “Whatever it was, you had to start from scratch. So, you learned pretty quickly to keep everything neat.”
Jared Barrett says he loves Middle Eastern food and has wanted to learn how to make hummus.
“I’ve worked all over the restaurant except cooking,” he says. “I haven’t had much opportunity to cook for myself.”
The 29-year-old has been at the shelter since early July and is trying to get back on his feet after landing a job at an umbrella warehouse. Someday, he hopes to get a job as a flagger.
When the cooking is all done, the class eats what they’ve made. The hummus comes out smooth and smelling of savory sesame oil, and the pita chips are crispy. Curtin, leaning against a table in the Share House cafeteria, talks about how chefs eat on the fly — just like this — and how they always know a few meals that can be put together like this if ingredients run out.
The kitchen at Share House, which serves about 89,500 meals yearly to homeless people, has run out of food before. When the kitchen recently ran out of sloppy joes, Reid says he put together a dish with pasta, bacon, peas and Parmesan cheese.
Curtin would like to make the classes more structured. She envisions someday teaching people who’ve just gotten housed how to cook wholesome, nutritional meals on a low budget.
“I believe I have something to offer people who are transitioning,” she says.
The group loads up plates with hummus, veggies and chips, and hands them out to people milling around Share House. Curtin smiles as she heads back to the kitchen. “Food’s a great thing. Food’s a beautiful thing,” she says.
