In a Wooster Square church kitchen, Moses Boone cooked up pommes savonette, wild mushroom risotto, seared scallop citrus salad with pomegranate gems, linguini con le vongole fujite — and maybe a new career for himself.
Boone (pictured), who’s been unemployed for a year and a half, is the inaugural student at the Joseph Project, a new culinary arts job training program and labor of love started by stay-at-home dad Michael O’Leary.
O’Leary, a culinary school graduate and former accountant, has been working five years to get the Joseph Project off the ground. As of three weeks ago, the not-for-profit began offering six-week sessions of free cooking classes to unemployed and underemployed people looking for new job skills.
The Joseph Project — named for the biblical character who rose up from slavery to become the second most powerful man in Egypt — is designed to give people a second chance, particularly ex-offenders, O’Leary said.
In the debut session, currently underway, he began with two students, Boone and a woman who had been released from prison. Only Boone remains. O’Leary said he had to fire the woman last week, after she failed to live up to program requirements.
O’Leary, who’s 46, instills his high standards with a mixture of 19th-century formality — he insists on “Mr. O’Leary” and addresses others likewise — and the unvarnished four-letter-flavored “dialect” of his native Bronx.
On Thursday, he shared his vision for the Joseph Project while supervising “Mr. Boone” in the plating of risotto and seared scallop salad.
O’Leary sliced garlic for the linguini.
“I’ve been trying to get this off the ground for five years,” O’Leary said. The project’s roots are in O’Leary’s time in culinary school, where he learned to cook and that he didn’t want to be a chef, working nights and weekends for the rest of his life.
O’Leary went on to get an accounting degree, then became a stay-at-home dad when it became clear that his wife, a high-powered lawyer, had more breadwinning capacity than he did.
“I married up, as all men do,” O’Leary said. “I take all the money Mrs. O’Leary earns and I spend it.”
“Mrs. O’Leary” is now the sole source of funding for the Joseph Project. O’Leary household money pays for all the organization’s needs, and O’Leary donates his time.
Boone left the kitchen to deliver bowls of risotto to the various office workers in the church building.
In his capacity as dad to a 7‑year-old in private school, O’Leary began offering cooking lessons as prizes at school fundraisers. In his capacity as family accountant, he realized the household was contributing up to $20,000 a year in charitable contributions. He began to wonder if that money could be directed to good causes in a different way.
One day, watching TV, he learned about the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which trains unemployed people for jobs in the restaurant industry. “You know, that’s what I want to do,” O’Leary said.
He eventually traveled to Chicago to learn more about the program. A year ago, he moved to New Haven from Monroe and thought for sure a similar program would already exist in the city. When he found that it didn’t, he started making connections to create his own.
O’Leary interrupted his tale to taste Boone’s salad dressing. Needs more citrus, he said, then, “Isn’t that better?”
Rev. Alex Dyer picked up some risotto.
O’Leary landed at the Episcopal Church of St. Paul and St. James, on Olive Street in Wooster Square, where he makes use of a small kitchen. Through neighborhood email chains, he found a couple of students.
The female ex-con at first seemed to be working out. “But she did a no-call, no-show last week,” O’Leary said. He also found she hadn’t told him all the details of her criminal past.
O’Leary said he’ll accept ex-offenders, even ones who have committed violent crimes, as long as they haven’t hurt women or children, and as long as they don’t lie about their past. He’ll do a background check on all students. “I will bounce you if something shows up,” he said.
Two church office workers interrupted the story with empty risotto bowls.
“I haven’t had a bad meal in this restaurant yet,” said one.
“Bella! Bella! Bella!” exclaimed the other.
The Joseph Project is based in part on the traditional French cooking tryout known as “stage” (pronounced “staahj”), O’Leary continued after accepting the praise. Back in the day, you would go to cooking school, then you’d head out to the local fine restaurant in your chef whites with your sharpened knives and seek an appointment with the head chef, O’Leary explained. “You’d say, ‘Let me stage.’”
The chef would take a look at you and maybe let you intern. “Maybe eventually he’d start paying you,” O’Leary said. “It was like an old-school audition.”
O’Leary has already spoken with several restaurants in New Haven to find out what skills they’re looking for in new hires. He said he intends to help his graduates to stage locally — if they’re ready.
At first he thought only “the first couple of people have to be bulletproof,” O’Leary said. “Then I realized: no, everyone has to be bulletproof.” Otherwise, it will reflect poorly on the program.
Boone distributed pomegranate gems in salads.
Boone, who’s 60, said he aims to be one of those “bulletproof” Joseph Project grads. He grew up cooking, taught by a mother who insisted her sons wouldn’t burden their future wives with all the kitchen work. He lived for 16 years in Sweden, where he taught himself to be a sushi chef. Until a year and a half ago, he was in auto sales, then was laid off.
People have always told him he should cook professionally, Boone said. Now’s the time to pursue it or be doomed to always wondering if he should have, he said.
O’Leary said he’s working to set up an appointment for Boone to meet the chef of a well-known restaurant in New Haven, to see if he can stage for him. He asked that the restaurant not be named, but said it’s “one of the best.”
When the current session concludes in several weeks O’Leary plans to start up with another six-week course, for which he’s currently seeking participants.
Previous installments of “Chef of the Week”:
• Benito Vidal/ Pacifico
• Franco Gonzalez/ Ay Salsa!
• Pankaj Pradhan/ Red Lentil
• Denise Appel/ Zinc
• Tony Poleshek, Jr. / Orangeside
Moses is a dynamic, energetic, smart man--I'm sure he'll do excellent wherever he ends up!