***Actual date that this article was written: November 3, 2003

Firefighters Heat Up in the Kitchen: CHALLENGE PROFESSIONAL
CHEFS IN FUND-RAISING COOK-OFF
- Anna Schneider-Meyerson
Bam!
Sherman Smalls tosses potatoes and green beans into a roasting pan the size of a baby’s
bathtub! He wrestles with an alligator-sized filet of salmon! He feeds 14 hungry and ashy
firefighters eggplant chutney!
In his eight years as a firefighter, Mr. Smalls has become the Emeril Lagasse of his engine
company. He makes a mean marinade.
And the former pastry chef isn’t the only firehouse foodie around. This evening, he and four
similarly talented firefighters will face off against professional cooks in an Iron Chef-like
challenge called the Iron Skillet. They’ll challenge the professionals to make a dish as good as
theirs using the same ingredients as part of a fund-raiser for a September 11 support center
called September Space.
For the most part, it’s comfort food these amateur chefs prepare, the kind of hearty grub that
makes the kitchen the heart of the firehouse: shoemaker’s chicken, hearty fish stew, pork
stuffed Thanksgiving-style.
Firefighter Scott Worontzoff of Engine 58 in Manhattan, however, is serving a sake-glazed Ahi
tuna with roasted pumpkin puree and edamame. He adapted the dish from one prepared by
his cooking mentor, Ed Wickman, the executive chef he succeeded at Merrill Lynch’s corporate
cafeteria. Mr. Wickman liked to make a sake-glazed shrimp with tangerine vinaigrette.
John LaFemina, of Rescue 3 in the Bronx, says he was spoiled by his time he spent behind the
counter at a pork store as a teenager. He’d prepare the sausages from scratch; mincing the
pork cutlets with a manual grinder, adding fresh pecorino, or paprika, or peppers where
needed.
For the classic Italian dish, chicken scarpariello, that he’s preparing, he’s afraid the organizers
might give him store-bought sausage.
“I’m hoping that they’re going to give you restaurant-quality sausage. I don’t want any Shop
Rite sausage,” he joked.
Cooking has always been a focal activity at firehouses. Firefighters shop for a meal’s
ingredients together, and then spend the hour or two required to prepare it in chummy
harmony,skinning potatoes, flicking skins across the kitchen, and mixing up industrial-size vats
of whipped cream (if the occasion arises).
But some get into it more than others, like the firefighters who signed up for Michael Ventura’s
“American Steakhouse” course at the Institute of Culinary Education. Mr. Ventura, the chef at
Luxia restaurant, then offered the same course at the firefighter’s company in Chelsea and
said the men there were receptive.
“If they don’t cook they don’t eat,”he said. “They really wanted to be better cooks.”
All of the participants in the fundraiser for September Space admit to being big Food Network
fans — but prefer Emeril to the Iron Chef.
“The firemen are into Emeril because he’s a guy’s guy,” said Brooklyn firefighter-chef Stephen
Asaro, who is preparing stuffed pork with cranberry glaze. “Everybody likes the ‘Bam!’ He’s a
regular guy.”
“With Julia Child and the Galloping Gourmet it was so pretentious and boring.Now everybody
can cook,”he added.
Of course, sometimes the dashes of sophistication are lost on the crowd, like the chutney that
Mr. Smalls made when he ran a practice run late last week.
“He makes a good chitney — or chutney,” said Charlie Frame, one of Mr. Smalls’s colleagues
at his Richmond Hill, Queens, firehouse.
Three of the participants, Mr. Smalls, Mr. LaFemina, and Mr. Worontzoff, have backgrounds in
the food industry. But they insist there’s no connection between the skills required to turn up
the flames in the kitchen and to put them out when they’re called to duty.
“The learning curves are the same,” said Mr. Worontzoff, who still works for a caterer, as well,
during the summer. “They can teach you everything in the books but you do most of your
learning by practicing what they teach you.”
The full-time chefs are instructed to make dishes with the same elements of the firefighters.
But that’s being loosely interpreted. Mr. Smalls is preparing broiled salmon and eggplant
chutney; his competitor David Pasternack of Esca is grilling a whole branzino and serving it
with salsa fresca.
“His is a lot more fancy. Mine is higher impact,” joked Mr. Pasternack.
He says he’s heard the firefighters might put up some sturdy competition.
“They’re better cooks than policemen, that’s for sure,” he said.
Article Reprined from
The New York Sun
November 3, 2003