By any standards – and in a world increasingly involved in its own troubles there are plenty of those – September 12 promises to be a good day for the world’s poor and disadvantaged : it sees the launch of Chefs for Humanity, a big-hitting concept, surely crying out subliminally for many a hungry moon, writes David G Philips.

In an auction lasting 10 days – one of the world’s more unstoppable forces, the desire and ability to eat well, will put on a humanitarian harness that should fit nicely,(thank you very much) given its origins in one of the world’s most immovable forces – Hunger.

New Orleans take note:

The whole shebang was organised by Iron Chef Cat Cora. Others include: Rick Bayless, owner of Frontera Grill and Topolobampa in Chicago and host of PBS’ Mexico — One Plate at a Time; David Burke,executive chef at New York’s The River Cafe and Park Avenue Cafe; Todd English, who stars on the PBS reality show Cooking Under Fire; Elizabeth Faulkner, executive pastry chef and managing partner of San Francisco’s Citizen Cake patisserie restaurant bar; Mark Franz, executive chef and co-owner of San Francisco’s Farallon Restaurant; Thomas Keller, owner of Napa Valley’s French Laundry, Las Vegas’ Bouchon and New York’s Per Se; Emily Luchetti, pastry chef at Farallon Restaurant; Nancy Oaks, owner of San Francisco’s Boulevard; Jacques Pepin, one of America’s best-known TV chefs who has hosted the acclaimed PBS series Today’s Gourmet;Rick Tramonto, executive chef at Chicago’s TRU Restaurant; and Norman Van Aken, owner of Norman’s in Miami, Orlando and Los Angeles.
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Chefs for Humanity is an E-Bay sale raising money from cuisine and gastronomy. For a 10 full days, the sharp end of the silver service will be axiomatically linked to the desperate fingers in a rice bowl : the satisfaction of both hungers – and of our need to help solve such problems – will be under the electronic hammer. Brilliant. Yummy.

Cat Cora is no stranger to Soul Food A super chef with a super-conscience, she founded Chefs for Humanity in 2004. “So many children and families in this world are hungry every day. They don’t have proper food, adequate nutrition, and in many instances the infrastructure in place to make their lives better. We have to help. As someone who has made a living with food, I had to help.”

Cat Cora was raised in a small Greek community in Jackson, Mississippi by a family who held strongly to their Greek and Southern heritage, which included traditions, celebrations, and food. In the Cora family, it was common to eat spices from the South, as well as fresh sheep and goat cheeses and home-cured olives sent by relatives from the island of Skopelos. Both her grandfather, father, and godfather were restaurateurs and by the time she was fifteen she had already presented a business plan to them for her very own restaurant. During college she cooked at an Italian bistro and a private dining club preparing classical French cuisine. After graduating from college, Cat followed a dream and backpacked through Europe for four months in search of good food and wine.

Leaving Mississippi for New York with a Bachelor of Science degree in exercise physiology and biology under her belt, Cat got the education of her dreams at The Culinary Institute of America, in Hyde Park. While in New York, she apprenticed with and then worked for Chef Anne Rozenweig at Arcadia and worked at the Beekman tavern under Chef Larry Forgione of An American Place.

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Her culinary education continued in Europe with apprenticeships with two of France’s three-star Michelin chefs: George Blanc and Roger Verge. From George Blanc of Vonnas, outside of Lyon, she learned a great deal about cuisine of the French countryside, tolerance, and extreme cooking. With Roger Verge, she learned not only about cooking great classical French cuisine, but also about embracing life and living it to the fullest as Roger does.

After returning to New York, Cat worked as a sous chef at The Old Chatham Shepherding Company under Chef Melissa Kelly before heading west to plant her roots in Northern California. She was offered the position of Chef de Cuisine in Napa Valley’s Bistro Don Giovanni where her knowledge and love of Italian-inspired cuisine grew

Cat has been fortunate enough to cook for such luminaries as Jacques Pepin, Robert Mondavi, Wolfgang Puck, and even Bill Gates. She is also a member of the Screen Actors Guild and is featured in a documentary called Cat’s In The Kitchen by director/producer Scott France about her first James Beard dinner that took place in April, 2002.

Cat recently appeared on Regis and Kelly for the second time around, The Wayne Brady Show and Living It Up with Jack and Ali. Cat and her partners at 3 Street Media and The Cat Cora Show, LLC have developed The Cat Cora Show, a talk show devoted to food, wine, which Cat will host and produce. Cat’s first published cookbook was called Cat Cora’s Kitchens and she is currently working on a second one titled Under The Olive Tree.

Given E-bay’s unique facility of a global audience of unparalleled size (and girth), it is hard to conceive of an event closer to humanitarian perfection than ‘The Jackets Off Our Backs’, also devised by Cat Cora – with the proceeds set to benefit Unicef, the world’s leading child-relief organisation. Throwing a girdle around the world – while celebrating all that stretches our own – has never been more purposeful : the professional response has been genuinely countrywide and culturewide. The sale features jackets autographed by nearly two dozen world-famous superchefs, including 10 celebrity chefs from the Food Network;. – and it is set to spread overseas. “This eBay auction is just the first of many activities that will help raise money for humanitarian efforts in our country and around the world” declares Cat, the first woman on the Iron Network.

The Chefs for Humanity’s manifesto could not be more timely in this weekof New Orleans – to respond promptly to problems worldwide by mobilising audiences and resources worldwide and to do this by creating coalitions between as many like-minded and famous chefs as possible.

And given what has been achieved in the USA for this September sale – a supreme melee or compote de talent brought into the same melting pot – prospects could hardly sound any more mouth-watering, landscape-changing and hope-bringing.

Among those participating in the auction will be the Food Network’s Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, Tyler Florence, Gale Gand, Emeril Lagasse, Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto,Sara Moulton, Rachael Ray and Ming Tsai.

Wherever Charity does start – or wherever she goes astray,(we all know that Home isn’t always straighforward) Chefs for Humanity can only be loudly cheered for raising the flag just North of the Digestive Tract. Even if it would be an exaggeration to claim that ‘we are all cooks now’, we are nonetheless precisely zero degrees of separation away from a chef – or a menu – of one sort or another. Listening to Grateful Dead or using Google ? Then you’d be in touch with superchef Charlie Ayers…Switching on Oprah ? That’s Art Smith’s table. These are just two of the autographs available and the jackets will never have been hotter than on September 12.

Needless to say, every home has a menu these days – and on that menu there is an auction that could bring a main course, and the only course, to a very hungry child.