PALMETTO

Cannaloni beans, ground turkey, olive oil, oregano, red bell peppers and tomatoes surrounded the electric frying pan on the table.

Peperoncini, too.

“Can anyone tell me what you use peperoncini on?” Chef Gaetano Cannata asked his captive audience.

“Pizza,” one youth answered in a classroom at the Palmetto Youth Academy, a Level 8 high-security facility for juvenile offenders.

“Makes it spicy,” the 53-year-old owner chef agreed.

Tuesday the peperoncini was going on tacos.

Italian tacos?

“My father came from Sicily and never ate out, he cooked everything himself — made his own tacos, too,” said Cannata, owner and operator of Ortygia Ristorante in the Village of the Arts. “That’s where I learned it from.”

So 16 teenagers — all minors, whose names could not be used — were going to get a mid-morning snack and a lesson in nutrition, too.

Maybe a taste of their future, as well.

“I got a lot from this,” one student said later in between bites. “I want to be a chef, too.”

Which is what Jacquelin Jones, the Academy’s principal of education, wanted to hear.

Cannata’s appearance was just one in a series of educational programs held within the institution’s barbed-wire rimmed confines where 48 youths serve 9- to 12-month sentences for felonious drug-related offenses.

“We have students who have dreams and aspirations, but have they ever been introduced to them?” she said. “We try to bring the community in to be part of the education process, a hands-on, tangible experience they otherwise won’t get.

“It might be an abbreviated component, but a light might go on and they’ll say, ‘Yeah, that’s what I want to do, so I’ll work toward that.’”

That’s what Cannata had hoped Tuesday’s performance would do.

While he’s used to serving dozens of patrons inside and outside Ortygia, those 16 juveniles in white tops and dark blue pants were his prime patrons Tuesday.

The teacher in him — Cannata once taught at Saint Stephen’s and Rowlett Elementary School — showed during the 90-minute session.

Assisted by one student, he explained his choice of ingredients and their purpose and took questions, too.

“I wanted to give them something they can relate to and everybody loves tacos,” Cannata said. “You get all these ingredients for $10 for all these kids, and you can buy it as cheaply as a McDonald’s hamburger. It’s also good nutritionally and takes care of the food groups, things they need to know.”

Classwork never tasted so good.

“I love doing it,” Cannata said. “Kids are receptive. I don’t care what anybody says, these kids are awesome. If one of them decides one day he wants to be a cook, it’s an awesome thing.”

Another student thought so, too.

“If I didn’t have a good idea of what I want to do careerwise, I would consider this an option,” he said.

And what does this student want to be?

“A mortician,” he said.

Vin Mannix, local columnist, can be reached at 745-7055.