By Alejandra Owens

If you’re on Twitter, you might know her from her delicious tweets about food in DC Public Schools. Yes, you read that right – “delicious” and “public schools” together in the same thought. Chef Allison Sosna is an executive chef for DC Central Kitchen’s profit-bearing arm, Fresh Start Catering, and she is passionate about school food.

Actually, to say she is passionate is an understatement. Sosna’s energy for the issue, the chefs she works with and the kids at her schools reverberates through the room when she discusses it.

“How we, as a country, feed kids in school is directly affecting the amount of money this country spends on health care issues stemming from obesity now, tomorrow, and for years to come. If we don’t take the time to fix what we have done wrong with the food system in this country then we will continue to see the next generation’s life expectancy, and then one after that, continue to decrease. That is terrifying,” says Sosna.

Sosna found a niche in the food world before it became en vogue, but thanks to Robert Egger’s social evangelism and Michelle Obama’s bullhorn for healthy eating, her platform is now a more popular one.

Her culinary career started in 2005 after she volunteered in the kitchen on a whim at Chef Geoff’s restaurant by American University, where she was doing her undergrad work. Sosna spent four years cutting her teeth in local mainstays like Hook and the Inn at Little Washington and finally landed at Dean and Deluca, where she cooked for large-scale catering projects and retail operations. A primer for what was to come next in her career.

“A major part of my undergraduate life was studying sociology,” said Sosna. “After living in Italy for about a year I wanted to learn how to cook, because cooking brings people together and that’s a major part of sociology. Then I wanted to figure out how to use those skills to give back to the community and do my part by bringing people together through food. At the time I was at Dean and Deluca and had heard of DCCK, when one of my mentors, Barton Seaver, had suggested I apply for the exec sous chef job there. I took his advice and here I am almost three years later working with folks from all backgrounds to bring people closer together through food, most of them being students.”

When you pair her fervor for teaching kids about the virtues of healthy foods with her love of locally-sourced ingredients (which isn’t restricted to farmers market fare, she’s a lover of DC’s Three Stars Brewery, one of DC’s local breweries) one can’t help but think Sosna is set to become a power house in the DC food scene. In fact, if she can negotiate with a middle school boy about the type of pizza that should be served for lunch – and win — some would say she’s already prepared to do big things in Washington.

When I asked Sosna to share a seasonal recipe that could be sourced from a local farmer’s market, she scoped out the two markets where she’s a regular: 14th and U Street market and Mt. Pleasant market. She decided the berries at the market were just too good to resist, and the blackberries seemed a perfect pairing for chocolate. Her Blackberry Purple Basil Chocolate Pops are the perfect lazy summer day cooking project after you’ve sweat it out buying all the ingredients at the market. And what’s more, these are just the kind of thing she’d consider serving the kids she feeds every day at DC Public Schools – healthy, local and most importantly, fresh!

 

Blackberry Purple Basil Chocolate Pops

Ingredients

• 6 oz semi sweet chocolate chips
• 2 cups pureed and strained blackberries
• 2 cups milk
• 3 tbsp sugar
• .5 cup finely chopped purple basil (or green basil)
• Pinch maldon salt for garnish

 

Directions

1.  Place chocolate, milk, sugar, blackberry puree, into pot

2.  Stir over medium heat until smooth and thicken, remove from heat.

3.  Let cool

4.  Add basil

5.  Place in ice pop holders or ice cube trays with toothpicks

6.  Freeze

7.  Pop out and sprinkle lightly with Maldon salt for salty-sweet finish

8.  Enjoy