-Liza: Welcome, everyone, to "food.

curated.

", a show that takes you behind the scenes to meet today's most inspiring food makers.

Stick around as we take you inside thriving home-based food operations around the boroughs.

(bright music) I'm Liza de Guia, documentary filmmaker and food lover.

I invite you to discover the people and passion behind good food in New York City.

This is "food.

curated.".

Funding for food.

curated.

is made possible by: Stele is a globally curated collection of artisanal and independent perfumes.

Hand-picked ofactory experiences that tell a story.

Available online and at two New York locations.

For more info we're at Stele (dot) NYC.

Support for food.

curated.

comes from CMD Psych.

Bringing holistic approach to child wellness and women's mental healthcare Helping patients find balance and harmony in their lives.

For more info, head to CMD Psych (dot) com.

Additional funding provided by (bright music) -Liza: The hustle.

How do we squeeze an extra dollar out of our day?

Luckily in New York, a number of amateur and professional chefs are registering as home processors, allowing certain types of homemade foods to be sold and marketed within New York State.

The rise of these so-called cottage food entrepreneurs has been exciting, ushering in modern takes on old cuisines and mashups of favorite classics.

(bright music) (gentle music) -Sarah: Mandel bread exists in people's homes, but it's just not like the star of the show.

It's no one's like best favorite dessert.

So my plan was to like, no, I'm gonna make it your favorite.

You know, I'm gonna make it cool.

Hi, my name is Sarah Parkes.

I am the founder of Sparkes Kitchen, a mandel bread bakery based in Midtown Manhattan.

Looks a little bit more fun.

So my mom's mandel bread is great.

And growing up, whenever I told people that, you know, my mom made mandel bread, it's not like a well-liked Jewish dessert.

There's other Jewish desserts out there that are a little bit more decadent like rugelach or babka.

I think making mandel bread a little more fun makes it more accessible to people and it also helps me in selling it to people that aren't Jewish or that don't know what mandel bread is.

It's not like, "Wow, can't wait for like mandel bread."

And I just feel like, you know, everyone has a grandma that makes mandel bread and sometimes it's really like dry and chalky.

And so I thought that I needed to do a little like facelift for the food.

So part of that is making it taste good and also like making it look good.

So this is my kitchen and it is a really small studio apartment kitchen.

This is where all the magic happens and I feel like I'm on cribs.

- Chocolate chips, jam, eggs, butter, cream cheese.

I don't have anything that I could eat right now.

So we're gonna make lemon poppy mandel bread and sweet potato pecan, caramel coconut, and apple crumb All right, so lemon.

Poppy seeds.

Okay, and then this is vanilla.

Almost everything is from scratch.

For example, like my sweet potato pecan mandel bread.

I am getting the sweet potatoes and you know, making the puree myself and caramelizing the pecans.

I have a coconut caramel flavor, which I'm making the caramel by scratch and all that stuff.

So I like to do it by scratch as best I can.

I just find that I can be a little bit more nitpicky of what I want in there and what I don't really want.

So while I'm mixing, I don't use like a kitchen aid.

If I use like an electric mixer, I find the consistency just doesn't taste the same.

Depending on the flavor, I'll use like molds.

This kinda keeps it in shape.

Growing up, every Friday my mom would bake mandel bread, which is an eastern European dessert that resembles a biscotti.

And so every Friday, without fail, coming home from school, my mom had mandel bread fresh outta the oven.

When we were going to family friend's houses for Friday night dinner to celebrate Shabbat, my mom would bring over mandel bread as her hosting gift and it kind of just became what she was known for among my friends.

Should I open it?

- Yeah.

- The recipe really means something to me and I found a lot of joy in doing something that my mom did for me and baking for other people.

So for me Sparkes Kitchen is really that feeling of family, nostalgia, just childhood memory.

So it rises a little bit in the tin, in the mold.

So this will go into the oven for 20 minutes.

And then after 20 minutes, I take it out, let it cool, cut it, flip it onto its side, put it back into the oven, and then I do that again.

So it goes in three times.

So the traditional mandel bread recipe from my understanding is made with almond.

So mandel bread, mandel brot is almond bread in Yiddish.

So it comes from Eastern Europe.

We actually have like documents of my grandfather's memoirs that his mom made mandel bread in Poland where he was from.

The way that you bake it is similar to biscotti and making it in loaves.

But there's nothing about it that's bread.

It's harder.

It's not like a gooey chocolate chip cookie that, you know, melts in your mouth.

There's a crunch to it.

Perfect.

You can kinda see from the texture, like it's a bit softer on the inside.

I can kind of play with the dough a bit and then the outsides are crispy.

The way that I rebranded mandel bread was I cut off the ends and I dip the sides in either like sprinkles or nuts or anything that makes it a little bit more fun and interesting.

I don't dip so much into it, so I feel like it's just like an added kick.

Anyway, but we're gonna play a game.

We have chocolate chips.

Do we wanna do like M&Ms and chocolate chips?

(sound of lifting flour) (laughter) -Sarah: Over there.

The purpose of my business, while I love to share mandel bread with other people and I like that creative side, the purpose is and was started to be a way to support people with disabilities.

You ready?

So we are gonna be making M&M mandel bread.

Growing up, I had a cousin with autism and I think that was an introduction to the disability community for me.

“Right, do you remember our next step?” My parents like to say that I was just born this way, that as much as I had a connection to my cousin, it really was something that they just always found me gravitating towards people with disabilities.

And it was something that I just found a lot of purpose in that like human connection.

And so it just seemed like a natural fit to also work towards creating a business that creates employment opportunities for people with disabilities.

“This one goes to, yes.” And until I can get to that point, I'm teaching baking classes for kids with disabilities and also donating a portion of my proceeds to nonprofits that support people with disabilities.

- [Student] Just keep saying the Declaration of Independence.

- Sarah: About 80% of people wit disabilities are unemployed, and it's not for their lack of interest or capability.

It's that sense of purpose.

It's a sense of belonging that I think we all, you know, we all desperately want that, and I think people with disabilities aren't always given that opportunity.

(bright music) This is my apple crumb flavor and then what I'm dipping in is the crumbs of the streusel that was on the top.

I think for the most part, like people have been excited by it, excited by the new changes that I'm doing.

I don't feel like anyone's been offended.

I think, if anything, my mom loves that I'm taking something that she made and recreating it into making it my own.

Yes, so I say my tagline is: “Not your mama's mandel bread” So it's just a playoff of like that it was my mom's recipe, but it's a little different and to not expect it to be the same as what you've grown up with.

All right, cheers.

- Sarah's Mom: Cheers.

-Sarah: This is the last part of the process.

I am putting the mandel bread pieces into my box and then I label and then they're outta here.

You know, right now I'm not even taking a salary, like taking a cut of this 'cause I'm just trying to see if people like it and I think I'm feeling finally secure that people like my products and people want more of it.

And so I need help.

And the natural best step is to hire someone with a disability.

-Students: Whoo!

-Sarah: Love it.

Well done.

(claps) Emotions are really pure with a lot of people in that population.

Like you know when they're sad, you know when they're happy.

There's not a whole lot of hiding, and that's nice, right?

It's just nice to be around people that are exactly who they are and not ashamed of it and not trying to hide it.

Yes, it's really good food, but also it's to create opportunities for people that they might not otherwise have.

(bright music) -Chef Jorge:I can do tortillas with my eyes closed.

I'm so confident now.

(chill guitar music) - [Liza: Looks good.]

(sound of tortillas flipping) [Liza: That's a good one, right?

- Chef Jorge: Yeah, look at that Just keeps going, you know.

-Amanda: It's easy to tell the d between a handmade flour tortilla and a packaged tortilla And a lot of the places we would go and eat at, it was recognizably packaged tortillas, which is fine.

There's a market for that.

You know, businesses will do what they need to do, but that handmade flour tortilla really makes a difference.

(door unlocking) Amanda: Hi, wel Border Town Tortilleria.

-Chef Jorge: My name is Jorge Aguilar and I'm the chef/owner of Border Town Tortilleria in Brooklyn, New York.

Packaged tortilla is not the same thing.

It is just not good.

(laughter) Kind of like whoom, whoom.

(saber sound) Kinda like Star Wars.

This is my special tool, yeah.

Border Town is a Sonoran-style handmade flour tortillas.

When I moved to New York City, I was just trying to find flour tortillas, but it was impossible.

I couldn't find any good flour tortillas.

I try to go to most of the Spanish areas in Brooklyn, Queens.

-Amanda: You know, we eat a lot of food and we've tried a lot of Mexican food and we were just not stumbling into any place that was doing flour tortillas.

You know, there's a lot of place that are now doing like nixtamal and the corn tortillas, and that's great.

They're doing a great job.

They're highlighting a different special region of Mexico.

But the flour tortillas need their chance to shine, too.

(upbeat music) - My tortillas, I feel like they're special because I get flour directly from Sonora.

This one comes from San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora.

My family, is from Sonora.

Flour tortillas on the north side of Mexico, it's very popular.

- [Liza] Do you have a preference?

- Chef Jorge: Between corn and flour?

There's no corn for me.

(laughs) Sorry.

It's only flour.

This is the Sonoran wheat flour.

It feels so soft.

It's kinda like very silky flour So powdery.

- Amanda: So we've been together for over five years.

He actually took me down to Mexico on one of our first trips together.

We crossed over the border into Mexicali just for some tacos.

And that's really where I was introduced to this flour tortilla that I, right away, was pretty much blown away and realized like, "Wow, I've never had this before.

I didn't even know this existed.

- So I just wanted to make somet that I haven't seen here and I know that I could do here.

I'm gonna pour the flour.

Now we're going with the pork lard.

And then what you want to start doing is getting the pork lard mixed in with the flour, try to get everything together.

And I'm gonna mix the salt into the water so it dilutes.

So now I pour in to my hand.

And then I'm mixing here slowly 'cause you don't wanna over water the flour.

It's all about getting the right consistency.

If I pour the water too fast, it'll be harder actually to mix.

Say like right here, it's like, it's a little too wet.

You know that the dough is ready, like there's nothing stuck to the bowl.

The dough is being developed right now.

So if you see how everything's coming off from the bowl, this is when your-- [Liza: Oh yeah.]

- Your dough is ready.

Now we have a dough that is nice and silky and just let it rest for, say 30 minutes.

The first time that I came up with a perfect dough, I felt it and it was so like smooth.

What I've noticed is like when you put the flour tortilla, it rises, like it bubbles, so it gets it like it blows up like this.

And the tortillas that I've been doing, none of them they were like blowing up.

So this one came up and I was like, "Oh, yes."

I was like, "Yes, I got it.

Yeah, I got it for the first time."

I was like keep doing it and doing it, And then, from then, it's just like the same thing.

(upbeat music) So I pack a cooler, I don't know like 50 mini burritos.

So I ended up going to Home Depot's, car washes.

People, they start buying and they loved the burritos.

- Amanda: And people were buying it and he had even regular customers.

And once we knew that, you know, these tortillas were nowhere else in New York, we knew that we might have a potential business on our hands.

We were lucky enough that tortillas happened to fall under an acceptable category for us to get a home manufacturing license, which we do have through the city.

And so we are able to, you know, legitimately make and sell tortillas out of our home.

- [Jorge] See how elastic, so stretchy it is.

- [Amanda] I think the most important aspect for him to get the tortilla right was really the texture.

- Well, mine are more soft, light.

I'm gonna flip this one.

So that's that.

- [Amanda] The pork lard adds another element.

It gives the tortilla that stretch.

Tortilla making really is a labor of love, especially for Jorge.

- This is what I like about my tortillas that you can see the other side of the tortilla.

- [Liza] It makes you happy?

- It makes me happy, yeah.

- I think some of the best feedback we get is people DMing us that, "Oh my god, these tortillas taste like my grandmother.” “These tortillas remind me of L.A.” “They remind me of Mexico."

So I think there's been a big reaction.

People are seeking out good Mexican food and I think it's giving all of us an opportunity to kind of showcase regional styles of Mexico.

- My dream is to have my own restaurant one day, have it like focus on my tortillas and the northern part of Mexico.

- Yeah, you know how they say like pizza in New York?

Like there's something in the water.

It's like with us, it's like there's something in the flour.

- [Liza] That almost feels like the end of like the video.

Like if I had to pick a quote.

- Yeah, you like that, babe?

(bright music) - [Luca] Oof, mamma mia.

This is so good.

-[Samantha]There is this comedian that he loves Sebastian Maniscalco that has a Jewish wife too.

And he has this skit that like Jews, they like shine at breakfast but then they drop the ball afterwards.

(laughs) - Luca (laughing) Yeah, he did talk about the Passover dinner.

You know, what happened, Passover?

He say they're reading the book.

“What we're doing here?

We're reading the book.

When is the food coming?” - Yeah.

- You know?

- They drop the ball afterwards.

- He say, "I'm Italian.

I need to eat right now.

I need bread."

- So, funny (laughing) yeah.

(upbeat music) - [Luca] Nice.

- Hi, my name is Samantha Hunt.

- Hi, my name is Luca Frau, and we are the co-founders of Oy Vey Osteria.

- We're located in Woodside, Queens.

What was the first time I tried your food?

I'm sure it was pasta.

- Yeah.

- I'm sure it was pasta.

- [Luca] Like pasta, garlic, oil - [Samantha] Yeah, I think it was pasta and garlic and oil, which was just over the moon.

- Sometimes we eat like every night.

- When we first met we were just eating pasta like all the time.

It was amazing.

It was delicious.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Watching him cook is like the best.

- I'm gonna mix it.

- It's so good.

- [Samantha] This is our new amaretti cookie.

We're trying out some new flavor combo.

- [Luca] Yeah, we put in it like rose water and orange zest, almond flour and sugar.

- The name of our business is Oy Vey Osteria, and our intention was just to like, when people read it, they would know it'd be like Italian and Jewish combination.

- To be clear, you know?

- But we wanted to be like funny.

We wanted to be like cool, you know, clever, and speak to a little bit of us too.

So we were like going through all these like “mamma mia” was in the mix, you know what I mean?

Like we were looking up all thes like Jewish or Yiddish phrases.

- I say, "Oh, how you say mamma mia but in Yiddish?"

- Yeah, what would be the equivalent and I think “Oy Vey” would be the equivalent.

- Oh, I like that.

I like that.

And then just be blended with Osteria that mean basically it's a bistro.

Cheers.

I wanna do like Italian style, like this tiny Osteria in Italy.

Like you came in, that's the menu today.

I don't have that from last week.

- That's his dream.

- Well, you try that?

I don't care.

- We're like he's inspired by what he found at the market.

- That's all we have for today, four dishes, delicious.

Everything home made.

That's what you got.

You don't want McDonald's.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - So good.

(bright music) - [Liza] So what are we making right now?

- [Samantha] We're gonna make some challah.

I'm gonna braid some dough.

- Yeah, I'm cutting the dough.

This dough, basically it's a challah dough, where we make difference instead of use like canola oil that's traditionally used, we use extra virgin olive oil.

The challah, remember, was the first thing that we struggled to make.

- Yeah, the challah, we did like 30 times.

And we're gonna show you a regular challah.

We're gonna do our seeded challa which I think is really yummy.

And it's like not something you find all the time 'cause I seed the strands and then braid it.

So it gives this like really cool texture all the way through.

You're the chef.

- Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm the ch I have this background.

She's an artist, of course.

And she was very good like with braiding.

- So this is a five strand braid So like this is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

You take five and you put it in between one and two and then you take one and you twist it.

I like the five braid.

I think it's a little bit more interesting.

You want a texture that is like fluffy but it pulls apart.

Like if a challah isn't pulling apart, it's not it, right?

- So our challah, they be proofing like two hours and now we are gonna brush with some egg wash.

Okay, let's go into the oven.

(music with sound of pan sliding into oven) A lot of my family members, we are in the food business.

We own a bakery room.

My sister, she run a bakery.

My grandmother, she was a pastry chef.

Look at this.

That's a challah, bro.

- [Samantha] I think his Italian aesthetic where it's like clean, but you wanna taste all the flavors, I think comes out really clearly in all our food.

- Italian cooking is very seasonal with your fresh ingredients.

So you really can taste every part, even the chocolate we make from scratch.

- [Samantha] Yeah, he makes chocolate spread.

- A lot bigger than use Nutella.

I never use Nutella.

Nobody in Italy use Nutella.

Now we're gonna do some chocolate babka loaf.

- [Samantha] The babka dough, it was a really traditional base but then he like added orange zest, which is like a very Italian thing.

- That's true.

In every dough in Italy, we had orange zest or lemon zest.

We try different flavor.

The babka always been like a bestseller.

It's a piece of art at the end of the day, you know?

- [Samantha] We met online.

- We both felt from the beginning like this connection, like we have a lot of things in common.

- Yeah.

- Was nice.

- [Samantha] And he was interested in kind of like my Jewish heritage.

- We are representing like a type of couple that exists in New York City, like Jewish Italian, there are a lot.

(bright music) That's our sourdough focaccia, 24-hour fermentation.

We gonna put extra virgin olive oil, like a lot.

When you do focaccia, don't be shy.

Forget about diet.

What I really appreciate that Jewish cuisine, they can do the most with a lot of limitations.

- And it's cool because all the recipes, like the traditional, you know, Jewish recipes, he really makes his own though.

- Now we are gonna brush some syrup to make like shiny.

Yeah, once Samantha, I think she opened completely new world to me.

It's a representation of myself.

So they look nice.

I blend everything together.

I create something new at the end.

It's important for me.

Look at the babka, man.

(whistles) Sexy.

- [Liza] Oh my goodness.

- Liza: So maybe those famous cookies of yours don't need to be just for fun.

Maybe they can add a boost to your bank account.

I hope you found a little spark to launch something of your own.

That's it for this episode of "food.

curated.".

For more information, you can head to the Department of Agriculture's home processing page on nyc.gov.

I'm Liza de Guia.

Be sure to connect with us on so and eat more stories.

I'll see you next week.

(bright music) Funding for food.

curated.

is made possible by: Stele is a globally curated collection of artisanal and independent perfumes.

Hand-picked ofactory experiences that tell a story.

Available online and at two New York locations.

For more info we're at Stele (dot) NYC.

Support for food.

curated.

comes from CMD Psyche.

Bringing holistic approach to child wellness and women's mental healthcare Helping patients find balance and harmony in their lives.

For more info, head to CMD Psyche (dot) com.

Additional funding provided by (bright music) Craving more about the stories behind the craft?

Dive deeper into the makers we care about, on our social pages, and at food.

curated.

dot com (bright music) (music) (music)