New York ? Sun streamed into the kitchen at Island Academy as the white-aproned cooking class students, ages 16 to 19, clustered eagerly around Lauren Groveman. She was showing the girls how to chop an onion to use in a recipe for Sloppy Joes.

Groveman, cookbook author and PBS host of “Home Cooking With Lauren Groveman,” held up a huge onion and told her pupils to always choose a big one so there is less work in the peeling. And, she said, “Don’t be afraid to use a big knife.”

The chef’s knife in her hand was tethered to the table by a cord, because Groveman’s students are prisoners. Some of them have committed violent crimes, including murder.

The word “island” in the name Island Academy refers to Rikers. The girls are there serving what is called a “city year” because they broke parole or because they are awaiting court appearances or sentencing. Most come from the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island.

“If these girls had money, they’d be out on bail,” said Mark Sauerhoff, also an instructor at the academy. A former sous chef at the Renaissance Hotel and at the Rocking Horse Cafe in Manhattan, he is paid by the board of education to teach two classes, five days a week.

Strict rules

Sauerhoff forbids discussion of their criminal cases while they are in the kitchen.

“They have their difficulties outside,” he said, “but as soon as they walk in, I tell them Rikers stops at the door.”

The kitchen classroom becomes a kind of safe haven, he said. But rules are strict. Not so much as a piece of foil, which could be fashioned into a fake corrections officer’s shield, or an apple that could be allowed to ferment for alcohol, leaves the room.

Lauren Groveman, center, and Mark Sauerhoff, right, say a prayer with inmates at Rikers' Island Academy before eating the meal they prepared.

About once a month, Groveman, who collected private donations to set up the kitchen at Rikers five years ago, loads up her car with supplies, more than enough for just the day, and travels to Rikers to teach two classes.

Cooking careers

Some of the teenagers talked about pursuing careers in cooking once they get out.

“I want to go to college and become a pastry chef,” said Taylor Colon, 19, of the Bronx. Others simply bask in the break from prison routine and like eating the food they make. “This is way better” than the regular prison fare, Colon said.

“How many of you have had Sloppy Joes that were not out of a can?” Groveman asked her pupils. “You mean from scratch?” asked Colon, the only one to raise her hand.

“This is Mother Mushroom,” she went on, showing the students a giant portobello before chopping it. “I like everything fat and round,” she told them.

Some of the girls hesitated before eating the mushrooms, but one of the class rules is that they must at least taste everything, unless they have allergies or religious prohibitions.

Potatoes roasted with rosemary and thyme may not seem all that adventurous to some, but in the students’ pre-Rikers lives, Sauerhoff said, many had eaten “very limited kinds of foods, a lot of fast food. They are not sitting down and having dinner with their families … . At first, they don’t even know what an index is.” They soon learn how to look up recipes in a battered copy of “The Silver Palate Cookbook,” a modern classic of the cookery world, which shares space on the shelves with Julia Child’s “The Way to Cook” and other donated cookbooks.

Home cooking

An Island Academy student prepares food during a cooking class.

Colon, the young woman from the Bronx who wants to be a pastry chef, said the food they make at class is “like home.”

But for many of the students, Sauerhoff said, cooking class is like a home they never had, and they are eager to share their newfound knowledge.

At Christmas, as gifts, some of them copied favorite recipes and mailed them home. They were for such homey fare as spaghetti and meatballs, pizza from scratch and chicken soup with dumplings.

Groveman, who donates her time and the groceries, and Sauerhoff, who has a budget from New York City’s Board of Education and Department of Corrections, try to bring the students a world through food.

New experiences can be dramatic, Sauerhoff said, adding, “When they scream, I know I’ve done a good job.” They squealed at the sight and scent of durian, the weird-smelling Asian fruit that is decidedly an acquired taste, and shrieked over starfruit.

“They are amazed that you can make whipped cream,” instead of buying whipped topping, he said. They had made crepes with whipped cream, bananas and chocolate sauce. When Sauerhoff saw that same dessert on a menu at Le Monde, a Manhattan restaurant, for $5.95, he asked for a menu to take to his students. “It makes them feel like they’ve had something the world has, they’re part of the world.”

A list of many of the foods they have made or tasted, including French cheeses such as bucheron and Gruyere, hangs on the wall. On the list is lobster chowder.

Surely, a visitor asked, the board of education budget did not allow them to buy lobster? “I went to a dinner party where lobster was served,” Sauerhoff explained. “I asked to take the shells, and we boiled them and made a great chowder.”

The students don’t want to miss experiences such as this. Sullyann Saez, 19, a friendly and outgoing girl from the Bronx, helped set the table for lunch and told one of the others in the class, “I missed Ms. Groveman’s Thanksgiving dinner. I was so mad.”

Saez had been in “Bing,” the inmates’ nickname for 23-hour isolation lockup. (The word derives from the “binging” sound the door makes as it closes them in.)

On her most recent report card, Saez got a 95 in cooking and 100, the only time the teacher has given that grade, in art class. After chopping with the chef’s knife was finished, Saez took it off the cord, carefully washed it, and returned it to Sauerhoff.

Later, Saez said she likes the class because “You learn how you’re really supposed to cook.”

Inmates apply to attend cooking classes, but if they get in trouble, as she did, that privilege can be suspended.

Seldom, if ever, do Groveman and Sauerhoff know what happens to their students after they leave Rikers, either to go home or to serve sentences “upstate,” a catchall category of prisons located beyond the city. But both teachers hope they are changing lives.

“I don’t judge these girls,” Groveman said. “I call them sweetheart. I don’t wait for them to say, ‘Give me love,’ I just do it. This is a jail, this is no nice place. If I see a girl who is hurting, I put my arms around her.” Nobody has ever refused the goodbye hug she gives each student.