Special-needs students cook up special dishes

The order came in, and it was a tall one: 300 servings of vegetable soup and honey cake. But chef Louis Ruttenberg's kitchen crew  stayed calm under pressure.

Joey Lerner, 27, manned an industrial can opener with aplomb, liberating diced tomatoes and kidney beans.

"Atta boy, Joey," Ruttenberg said.

Bradley Golub, 22, assembled ingredients for the honey cake - cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar. Kerry Kozlowski, 24, got the oil.

Matt Gardner, 27, grinned at collegial ribbing  not  to let the soup he was stirring burn.

"Won't happen," Gardner said. "I'm on top of it."

You would have thought they were culinary professionals. One day they may be.

Lerner, Golub, Kozlowski, Gardner, and four colleagues are all part of a pilot program that has been meeting twice a week since January at Congregation Beth El in Voorhees.

Called Soups and Sweets, it is a state- and foundation-funded program of Samost Jewish Family and Children's Services designed to give young adults with special needs employable food-service skills.

When they graduate on July 18, they will have had 200  hours of culinary training and will have earned a ServSafe Food Handler certificate from the National Restaurant Association.

They have also received coaching on workplace readiness skills from program job coaches. Agency staff will help them look for jobs, if they want them.

"People who hire people with special needs tend to have a dedicated, loyal employee," said Barbara Abrams, Jewish Family and Children's Services special-needs department director. "They don't take the job for granted."

Ruttenberg, a retired chef who had his own catering business, designed the course and wrote its manual. He admitted he initially had misgivings.

"But after a few weeks you stop looking at these people as special-needs. You just look at them as people," Ruttenberg, a Cherry Hill resident, said.

"The camaraderie is extraordinary," he said. "They understand how a kitchen works."

The students, all with some developmental disability, are on different levels functionally.

"The nicest thing is how supportive the students are of each other," said Claire Laveglia, a retired special-education teacher from Medford Lakes who is one of the program's job coaches.

Meanwhile, the fruits of the students' labor have received some rave reviews. They make desserts and soup to supplement the Meals on Wheels delivered to seniors. The class also gets orders from community groups.

The more than 230 attendees at the annual fashion show/fund-raiser of the Jewish Geriatric Home Auxiliary at Lions Gate was given a Soups and Sweets muffin to take home.

"They were delicious," said auxiliary co-president Adrienne Seligman, a Moorestown resident.

The highest praise for the program, however, comes from the students and their families.

"This class has inspired me," said Gardner, of Mount Laurel, who made the salsa he learned in class for his family.

"It's relatively new, but cooking is a passion of mine," said John Profaci, 20, also of Mount Laurel. A young man with Asperger's syndrome and an uncanny gift for picking up foreign languages, he comes from a food family. His father, a food broker, started a sausage-selling business with John recently, said John's mother, Gracia. He enjoyed helping out with cooking as a boy but had lost interest until Soups and Sweets.

"Our entire family is so into cooking, it means a lot to him and us," she said.

Joan Kozlowski, Kerry Kozlowski's mother, called the program "an excellent opportunity for our daughter to gain confidence and a skill."

And pride.

"She can't wait to get home to show us" what she has helped make, said Joan Kozlowski, of Delran. The parents can't wait to sample it, either: pepper steak, quiche, shepherd's pie, pea soup, sushi, to name a few of the dishes.

Bradley Golub, of Marlton, also takes pride in what he does.

"I think it has authenticity," he said. "It actually comes from our hands."

He said he has an application in with the Iron Hill Brewery; he would like to get a job in food prep - chopping and getting ingredients ready for cooking.

"He absolutely loves this program. He comes home so excited," his mother, Alexis Golub, said.

That wasn't always the case.

"He has autism," she said. "He is verbal, but he doesn't usually start the conversation."

On program days, Golub comes home full of news. He also has been helping her in the kitchen and can wield a knife better than she can.

"He's been trained by a chef," his mother said.

"You don't know how much your child or others with disabilities can do until you let them try," Alexis Golub said. "It can amaze you."