Elena Balletta is keeping things fresh, whole and raw in her kitchen both at home and at work. As a pastry chef for Pure Food and Wine, a gourmet vegan and raw food restaurant in Lower Manhattan, the South Beach resident blends sprouted buckwheat, maple and organic cinnamon to make the base for a crispy cereal. On the dessert menu, you will find apple pie, ice cream, ganache tart and coconut cream pie among the offerings. But you won't find any milk, eggs or dairy items. You can be sure, Ms. Balletta said, "there's no cardboard here." Foods are full-flavored and nutrient-rich. Desserts are tasty and guilt-free. Daily she balances the flavors of seeds, nuts, spices, grains and unrefined sweeteners to make desserts and sweets, like chewy almond crunch bars and a version of brownies from her childhood. NOTHING IS COOKED ABOVE 118 DEGREES Her experience at the restaurant, where nothing is cooked above 118 degrees, is linked to the current raw food culture. It's a spinoff from the natural-food movement which is growing in popularity today, and dates back to the plant-based cuisine that first surfaced in various American cities in the mid-1980s. In New York City, Dr. Annemarie Colbin, along with the Natural Gourmet Cookery School she founded, was a leader in the movement that linked food intake with health. Emphasis, then as now, is put on whole, fresh, unprocessed, organic foods. Although raw food hasn't reached the heights that its proponents hoped for, the interest in unprocessed foods and organically grown crops has grown dramatically in the past decades. Organic farming has increased by 30 percent in New York State. And, an ever-growing number of major food manufacturers are enticing consumers with newly developed, true-to-nature products. Ms. Balletta has long been a proponent of the health aspects of food and of being a vegan. She chose that direction in her culinary training and now she's involved in it within her professional career. In her spare time, she experiments with recipes. Recently she worked on a lavender/walnut cookie and in reinventing the pumpkin pie. Instead of preheating an oven to 350 degrees and baking, Ms. Balletta uses a dehydrator. Nothing here is cooked above that proscribed 118 degrees to preserve the nutrients and enzymes. She also helped develop a chocolate cherry biscotti with cacao on the desserts and sweets menu for wholesale accounts and the takeout section of the restaurant, which goes under the name Pure Juice and Take Away. FULL CULINARY TRAINING And while she trained at Pure Food and Wine as a chef's intern to learn the rudiments of the raw food movement, Ms. Balletta was in full command of the other basics of working in a restaurant kitchen as well as working with whole grains and natural sweeteners like agave nectar. She gained her culinary school training while attending Dr. Colbin's Natural Gourmet Cookery School. Ms. Balletta joins about 1,500 other culinary graduates of that school's chefs' training program which has emphasized plant-based cuisine and the link between food and health, since it started in 1987 as an extension of the school, founded a decade before by Dr. Annemarie Colbin. The course study features whole, fresh, unprocessed, organic foods. Along with knife skills, food purchasing and balanced nutrition information, "the training introduced me to more of the natural food ingredients, so when I interned, I was familiar with the coconut oil and the more natural sugars, like the agave and barley malt, and how to use them," said Ms. Balletta. She worked for several years as a paralegal before pursuing her passion for food professionally. When Balletta was looking for a culinary program to study, she gravitated toward Natural Gourmet because it was more in line with her personal diet and beliefs. "I really wanted a program that explored the health aspect of food and being vegan, it was nice to find a place that supported me personally," she said. FOOD TO PROMOTE GOOD HEALTH With a country becoming more focused on using food to maintain good health, restaurants like Pure Food and Wine are meeting a need. Culinary students of chef programs like Natural Gourmet are primed and ready to work. While Matthew Kenney, owner of Pure Food and Wine at 125 Irving Place, got his culinary training at the French Culinary Institute, he underwent a change in diet and lifestyle a few years ago. It led to the creation of the gourmet, boutique-version of raw food where you can find menu items like zucchini and golden tomato lasagna with basil-pistachio pesto and corn empanadas with eggplant, currants and walnuts or a fennel, rosemary and cashew cheese tart. "We changed our personal habits and we're chefs," said Kenney of he and partner, Sarma ?????. "We're culinary professionals who became raw vegans. We saw a hug opportunity in the marketplace. The whole health market is growing so fast. We thought we could do something no one else has done ,and add wine instead of making it a health food store." Pure Food and Wine now draws a diverse crowd of vegans, vegetarians and carnivores from 20-somethings to baby boomers and beyond. In 1993, after he trained as a lawyer, Kenney turned his attention to the culinary field and the art of Mediterranean-influenced cuisine. That's when he opened his first restaurant. Over the years, he opened several others, including Mezze, Cafe M in the Stanhope Hotel, Monzu and Metrazur. In 2001, his focus shifted to other restaurants with his partner -- Commissary in Manhattan and Commune in Atlanta. The tragic events of September 11 caused another shift which started with Kenney selling off his restaurant conglomerate. That was followed by the dietary changes. In May 2004, Pure Food and Wine opened. That allowed Ms. Balletta, who graduated from Natural Gourmet in March of last year, to intern, learn about raw food and flex her culinary muscles. A FAMILY THAT'S INTO FOOD Ms. Balletta comes from a long line of family members who love to cook and eat. Her father was a chef, and her mother loved chocolate and baking. Her two younger brothers and two older sisters helped make dinners fun. Growing up in a traditional Italian home, featuring big Sunday meals, she always helped with the cooking. It helped develop an enjoyment of it. "I feel like I've been cooking my whole life and loving it," she said. About eight years ago, this Florida native with heavy New York roots, decided to switch her diet from vegetarian to vegan. "When I was vegetarian it was all about the cheese," said Ms. Balletta, who now is 26. "But I find I feel so much better all the time now, having taken the diary out of my diet." So she started to experiment with changes to traditional family recipes. Her dream is that one day she'll open a restaurant with her father, incorporating both his Italian specialties and her working knowledge of raw food and vegan recipes. For now, she's balancing tastes for the sweet tooth. Her focus is so close to home that she even had one of her specialties -- the blonde macaroon -- tattooed on her arm. So, Balletta will never forget her professional culinary start. She said, "this is the first kitchen I worked in and they've really given me the confidence to try new things, so the tattoo is special."
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