What’s cooking in Auckland prison on Christmas Day?

On Christmas Day at 6am, J, a prisoner in his 30s who Stuff Identified by your first initial, you will enter the large stainless steel kitchen in Auckland Prison, where you are the head chef.

J and two other prisoner cooks, plus another in training, will fire up the many industrial ovens and begin roasting chickens for the other 900 people who are also serving time at the Paremoremo compound.

They will steam peas and carrots. They will roast potatoes seasoned with parsley, marjoram and oregano. They will make sauce from scratch using homemade chicken broth.

The roast will come with fruit, a muffin, a tub of yogurt, and two chopped fruit tarts.

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This is Christmas Day Lunch at Auckland Prison. The Department of Corrections dictates the menu, which will be replicated in all New Zealand prisons. What is served must meet specific nutritional requirements and be within a budget of $ 6 per inmate per day for all meals.

“So far, I have had good feedback. I still have no complaints, ”said J, who is about to spend his third Christmas in the prison kitchen. His release is scheduled for February, so hopefully it will be his last away from his mother and siblings.

On Christmas Day, and every other day, inmates like J cook and supervise the Department of Corrections staff. As part of their rehabilitation, they volunteer for on-the-job training in food preparation and espresso making, as well as in other areas such as engineering and agriculture.

They receive a small allowance as an incentive, starting at about 20 cents per hour of work. They can spend this in the prison dining room on treats like coffee, ice cream, or even TV rentals.

“It keeps you very busy and alert,” said W, another inmate who will make sandwiches for Christmas dinner, making sure those with certain dietary requirements: gluten-free, meat-free, salt-free, vegetarian, and the list goes on: get the food adequate. Christmas Day is the only day that dinner and lunch meals are changed.

Before his peers encouraged W to work in the kitchen, he was “in the yard and [working out] and doing what all the other inmates were doing, he was on his way to nowhere, ”said W.

He dropped out of school when he was 12 and has never had a conventional job. When you are released from prison in October 2021, you will likely have your first grade.

Those who train and work in the prison kitchen can earn up to a Level 3 Certificate in Cooking, preparing them to work in the industrial kitchens found in workplaces such as hospitals and hotels, said Sumit Kumar, catering instructor for the Department of Corrections. who was once a chef in a la carte restaurants.

“They learn health and safety, knife skills, how we cut vegetables,” said Kumar, which includes the main cutting techniques like julienne (thin cut) and paysanne (finely diced).

Participation in training programs generally reduces the rate of re-incarceration by 1.7 percent, according to the Department of Corrections.

“There are many things that are the same and many things that are different” about the prison kitchen, said Flemming Sudsgaard, the lead instructor for catering and hospitality for the Department of Corrections.

Like W, many of those who joined the program have never had a typical job. Something as simple as the routine of going to work on time every day, teaming up with other adults and receiving a paycheck, even a small one, requires some prisoners to get used to it, Sudsgaard said.

Knives and scissors are also kept in an office. Each item must be signed and accounted for when the day’s cooking is done.

“[The prisons] I don’t want to cause any problems, but you could say I have everything you need here for a really good riot, ”said Sudsgaard, who wears a stab-proof vest to work but has never had any prisoner incidents.

Although J and W have found their way through life in prison, that is not the same for all prisoners, said Deacon David Marshall, a chaplain.

He works with prisoners in the maximum security wings. Auckland prison is the only prison in the country that houses prisoners who have often misbehaved while serving their sentences.

“For a lot of them, a lot of depression happens around Christmas time,” Marshall said. It is often maximum security prisoners who have lost contact with their families and the community, he said.

Aside from lunch, Christmas Day in prison is a small affair with no in-person visits or religious services, so fewer Corrections personnel will be required, Marshall said.

Maximum security prisoners receive their long-awaited annual homemade cakes, prepared by New Zealand church groups. Prisoners are typically allowed only store-bought and packaged items due to security, but the relationship with church groups is a trust built over many years, Marshall said.

In the cookies, prisoners see “some recognition that they are not totally forgotten,” he said.