Teen chef whips up duck confit for fancy NYC benefit dinner for kids with cancer: ‘Proud to be helping’
NY Post
Upper East Side high school freshman Joshua Small is cooking up hope.
Small, a French-American student at the Lycée Français de New York, regaled 60 diners as the acting executive chef of East Harlem’s Tastings NYC Saturday, a “Youth to Youth” dinner to raise money for the sick children at the Ronald McDonald House-New York.
“I’m proud to be a kid helping other kids,” the self-taught chef, who’s only taken one training course at Lower Manhattan’s Institute of Culinary Education, told The Post.
For $150, ticketed attendees of the three-course fête were welcomed to cocktail hour hors d’oeuvres of gougères, or French cheese puffs, as well as Japanese chicken meatballs and 14-year-old Small’s signature gazpacho shots.
Appetizers, ramp arancini atop an arugula salad with a dollop of micro lentils, preceded Small’s pièce de résistance entree — duck confit, served with a butternut squash purée and grilled fiddlehead ferns.
As a sweet finish, the French-American Gen Alpha treated banqueters to Basque cheesecake paired with kumquats. The choice bites were accompanied by alcoholic and non-boozy beverages designed by the wunderkind.
