The holiday season brings with it recipes of signature dishes — staples that also facilitate convening with loved ones.

This month, chef Sebastian White delivered over two dozen fresh food prep kits to students at the Chicago Jesuit Academy, allowing them to whip up roasted butternut squash with maple brown butter and crispy kale chips. White walks them through the seasonal recipe on aYouTube video filmed in  his kitchen. This home cooking experience is known as Project T.E.N. (Together. Evolving. Nourishing.), an endeavor of The Evolved Network, also known as TEN.

“The Evolved Network concept is using farm-to-table as a way to reimagine what therapy can be,” White said about his culinary pedagogy. It’s a process White, TEN’s president and executive director, refers to as “redemptive hospitality.” Its tenets include showing up to be with individuals — not coming in as experts to “fix” anything or anyone; paying attention to individuals’ lived experiences and offering care with dignity creates an environment where everyone at the table, both figuratively and literally, is transformed.

White couples the farm-to-table culinary instruction with history, showing his students the genius of their ancestry’s relationship with the land. He aims to reconnect kids to that experience, adjust the narrative. If the topics of redlining and the proximity of one’s nearest grocery store arise during the hourlong classes, the conversation offers students a different perspective on their food experience.

White’s goal: Help youth to be more thoughtful, reflective and empowered, he said. For example, as he moves about the kitchen preparing the butternut squash on the YouTube video, he gives prompts to spark some reflection: “What memory or feeling comes up when you taste something that reminds you of home? If this dish could tell a story about your day, what would it say?”

It is White’s intention that the experience, like the food, are fresh — not canned.  “I make a dish and see what happens,” he said. “We’ll be making something and a kid will disclose something sensitive or vulnerable about themselves, about their experiences, because of the safety of the space.”

Waffles paired with a pear syrup and figs; mushroom/cauliflower tacos with avocado cream, arugula salsa verde, and Chihuahua cheese; and spinach-basil pesto pasta with chicken have all been on the in-class menu for students under White’s direction.

“We’re doing elevated, interesting stuff, because kids can do it,” he said. “I’m always embedding something new to the experience … be a part of building something versus buying it. I think that changes your perspective.”

Recently, first graders made a kale salad with quinoa, apples, chicken and an orange maple dressing. Many of the kids had never seen a dressing made from scratch. While some students admittedly preferred the protein over the roughage, most enjoyed it he said, and then he laughed.  Whether they liked it or not, he added, at least they learned something about themselves.

“I do think that exploring and expanding what kids see opens them up,” he said. “A significant part of what we offer is challenging their assumptions and their presumptions about an experience.”

Every six weeks, a new seasonal dish and video — Christmas will be a wintry one — will drop. The Dallas native said he wants to expand TEN’s programming to other schools, so he’s searching for collaborators willing to provide funding and labor.

When he’s not at schools such as the Jesuit Academy and William H. Ray Elementary School in Hyde Park, he’s fundraising for TEN cooking with James Beard Award winners and chefs at Michelin-starred restaurants. While White has held titles such as counselor, academic coach and gang intervention therapist over the years, it’s his love of cooking that sparked the creation of The Evolved Network. After working with others, cooking was therapeutic for him.

“What led me down this path is in the spring of 2020, after my father and my aunt passed away, three or four months later, I had a conversation with a mentor, and he essentially said, honor them,” White said. “I started writing out a concept that fused our passions together and have been grinding ever since.”

Another goal is to be embedded in the communities of the schools he works with, so that every student knows and feels connected to him and TEN’s mission. That means meeting children where they are, he said, allowing kids to be seen for who they are, and leaning into their individuality, one not based on what someone thinks they should be or are.

“I’m not trying to draw out potential. I don’t get to determine what a kid’s potential is. What I can draw out is uniqueness,” White said. Helping children take pride in what’s uniquely them, he said, adding, “that’s when potential becomes possible, because they lean into what they’re passionate about.”