CHS, CCTV alum competes on ‘Chopped’

Canton High School alumni Edy Massih has spent his entire career sharing with others what he learned how to prepare during his childhood in his native Lebanon: the freshly made Lebanese food that his family ate every day. Massih has worked for others as a chef in restaurants and owned his own private chef and catering business. Last week, he shared his cooking with a much wider audience when he competed against other chefs on the popular television show Chopped.

Chef Edy Massih

Massih learned about cooking at an early age from his grandmother. “I definitely spent a lot of time with my grandmother in the kitchen,” he said. “I learned the basics.”

His grandmother taught him to prepare rice, chicken shawarma, baba ganoush, kibbeh (a mixture of bulgar wheat, onions, and ground beef that is filled with a stuffing), and other dishes.

His family moved to the United States in order to give their children the opportunity to attend good colleges. They settled in Canton because Massih’s father’s brother and his family lived in town and there was a large Lebanese community in nearby Norwood. Massih spoke Arabic and French when he arrived; he began to learn English as a fifth grade student at the Hansen School.

With his parents working, Massih used his culinary skills to make dinner for his family after he got home from school each day. He said that in spite of being a messy cook, he did fairly well with his family dinners. Only one thing stymied him. “I didn’t know how to find ingredients,” he said. “Shaw’s and Stop and Shop was a new world. B.J.’s and Costco was a whole other new world. That blew my mind. Buying in bulk was not something we did.”

When he got to Canton High School, Massih began sharing his cooking skills with others after he discovered something unexpected at CHS. “I thought it was crazy that our high school didn’t have a cooking class,” he said. “People didn’t cook.”

So Massih started a cooking class with then CPD School Resource Officer Chip Yeaton. “He was very interested in that,” he said.

Massih is a big fan of Oprah Winfrey and a year after starting his cooking class, he learned that Winfrey was asking viewers to send in videos with ideas for their own show so that she could select a winner. Massih talked to CHS TV production teacher Ed McDonough about borrowing equipment to put together a video. McDonough, however, had a different idea.

He talked to Massih about starting a new show for Canton Community Television. Massih decided to do it, and created an eight-episode cooking show, teaching viewers how to cook things like steak and Italian food. His friends who were in the TV production program handled the filming and editing.

Massih went on to the Culinary Institute of America, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in hospitality management and an associate’s degree in culinary arts. He cooked at restaurants and learned about catering for high-end clients when he worked with Pamela Morgan and her catering firm Flirting with Flavors.

Massih enjoys cooking Mediterranean food and making dips. “I’m the dip Yeti,” he said. “That’s my go to.”

He learned how to cook Riz a Jej (dirty rice) from his grandmother. Other plates he makes include Labneh (Lebanese strained Greek yogurt), Lubiyeh (green beans in a tomato sauce), and Man’oushe (a Za’atar flatbread eaten for breakfast). Za’atar is a mixture of spices.

He eventually realized that there was a place in New York City for his cooking talents and catering experience. “Why is there no Lebanese food in New York?” he said. “I can do this catering on my own.”

He invested money in Yelp and Google advertising and opened Eduardo Massih Catering, a catering and private chef business. “It grew like crazy,” he said.

He had a strong connection with the fashion world and was handling 16 to 18 events a week when coronavirus hit New York and forced him to close. “I had to shut completely down,” he said. “Everything got cancelled.”

Closing his business gave Massih a chance to come home to Canton and spend three weeks with his parents, the longest he had been with them since he left for college. “It brought me back to my roots in May,” he said.

The producers of Chopped, a Food Network program, reached out to Massih two years ago. The episode in which he participated was filmed in June of last year and aired last week. The theme of the program was “Cauliflower Power.”

The competition consisted of three rounds; each chef prepares a dish with cauliflower and a panel of judges determine which contestant is eliminated at the end of each round based on tasting their food. Massih prepared an appetizer of watercress pesto and cauliflower risotto with a za’atar crouton during the first round and made it safely to the next round. Unfortunately, the judges were not taken with his entrée of gnocchi with a Kung Pao coconut sauce, sesame and snap peas, and Massih was chopped.

“You live and learn,” he said. “I wanted to make it through the first round. It was really fun; it was really stressful. You have eight cameras in your face the entire time. If I had flown, it would have been harder. I took the subway. It made it easier to lose.”

Massih’s latest project is Edy’s Grocer, a store that will feature groceries, Lebanese prepared foods and deli sandwiches, which he plans to open by August 15. He is going to open Edy Grocer’s in a small deli in a Polish neighborhood in Brooklyn, where he lives. He will also sell some Polish specialties.

For more information about Edy Massih, go to edouardmassih.com.

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Posted by Mary Ann Price on Jul 31 2020. Filed under Features. Both comments and pings are currently closed.