An award-winning dish featured as a special on Frontera Grill’s menu stands out in its connection to the legendary Julia Child. The Chicago restaurant’s sous chef created a cassoulet inspired by the French food maven whom Jauneeka Jacobs considers one of her mentors.
“I love Julia Child. She was a tall woman with a funny voice. She didn’t let that stop her. Sometimes, when you watch her, she might mess up, but she just keeps going,” says the Chopped grand champion.
The Cassoulet Mexicano served through early March is an enhanced version of a dish Jacobs made on her way to winning “Chopped: Julia Child’s Kitchen.”
She uses mantequilla beans, roasted suckling pig, morita chili peppers and other ingredients to make Frontera’s cassoulet. It’s become one of the restaurant’s top sellers.
“It took us a week and a half to perfect the dish. We were quite surprised because it is a big dish. It has all those meats and components, and people are not sharing it. That’s really cool to see,” Jacobs adds.
Jauneeka Jacobs Becomes a Chopped Grand Champion
Long before she made her first cassoulet, Frontera Grill’s sous chef became deeply interested in food, cooking and Julia Child. She watched “The French Chef,” “In Julia’s Kitchen” and other television shows starring the famous chef.
As a young teen, Jacobs also tuned into the Food Network and the Cooking Channel while dreaming of cooking on TV someday. “Chopped was one of the shows I always watched. I thought it was super cool how these chefs could pull out a dish without knowing what the ingredients would be,” she recalls.
A Food & Wine festival trip with Frontera Grill owner, celebrity chef and award-winning cookbook author Rick Bayless kept Jacobs from accepting the first offer to join a Chopped competition.
So, instead of a Mexican food show, she competed in the Julia Child-themed tournament. During the finale, the Chicago resident said, “This is my time to shine. I’m more confident than ever before, and I’m ready to win it all.”
The Chopped competition tested the skills she acquired working under the tutelage of Bayless, a seven-time James Beard award winner, and other Frontera Grill staff. The tournament tasked 16 chefs with creating Julia Child-inspired dishes from a mystery basket of ingredients.
In hindsight, 27-year-old Jacobs admits she had doubts about competing against older chefs with more experience in French cooking. “All the chefs there were chef-owners and executive chefs. So, I was very intimidated. They had at least 20 years of experience on me.”
In the finale’s 20-minute appetizer round, Jacobs made a dish inspired by Child’s Escargot a La Bourguignon, using black garlic molasses, scotch bonnet peppers, pâté and wild burgundy snails from the mystery basket.
The three judges, all acclaimed chefs, were impressed. Scott Conan called her dish’s deep garlic and butter flavors delicious. He said, “When I go to a French bistro and order escargot, this is the expectation.”
By Phyllis Armstrong
