Try this Pig's Blood Gelato, raise money for lung cancer research

ByWendy Daughenbaugh WPVI logo

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Try this Pig's Blood Gelato, raise money for a good cause

Ember & Ash is serving up its Pig's Blood gelato to benefit lung cancer research, awareness.

SOUTH PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- When Ember and Ash restaurant opened on East Passyunk Avenue at the end of 2020, the chef-owners had a mission of using all parts of the animals and vegetables

"We coined a phrase snout to root," says chef and co-owner Scott Calhoun.

From day one, they put a pig's blood pudding on the menu.

"My grandmother made it for my aunts, my dad," explains chef and co-owner David Feola.

it is a southern Italian tradition called Sanguinaccio dolce, with the blood working in place of an egg as a thickener.

"It's really delicious," promises pastry and gelato chef Janine Bruno, of Homemade by Bruno, who took that pig's blood pudding recipe and turned it into pig's blood gelato that's now on the menu at Ember & Ash.

The collaboration is the latest round in Tag Time Happy Hour, a rotating series of restaurant fundraisers for the LUNGevity Foundation, an organization that provides funding for lung cancer research.

$2 from every sale of the pigs' blood gelato goes to the fund.

The campaign was started by Kristina Burke after her husband, Chef Jim Burke, was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, last August.

"My initial ask which I thought was totally crazy was $25,000," Kristina says. Just 4 months later, Tag Time Happy Hour has raised more than four times that.

"She doesn't do anything halfway," her husband Jim says, "She took one happy hour...and turned it into a national campaign."

And she did it while battling cancer herself. Kristina was diagnosed with breast cancer in the fall of 2019.

"While Kristina was getting her surgical procedures to remove her cancer is when I got cancer," Jim says.

The Tag Time name came from Jim's treatment, a medication he takes every day at 5 pm.

"And you know, that's happy hour," Jim points out.

The couple was born and raised in Philadelphia and they've spent decades working in the city's restaurant industry. Jim has been a chef at Wm. Mulherin's Sons in Kensington for the past 2 years.

"They are really special people," says restaurateur Ellen Yin, "and I think that everybody wants to give back to them."

"And that meant a tremendous amount to me and my family to know that we live somewhere that's not just on a map; It's a creative community who is rallying behind our family," Kristina says, "for me, that's the silver line. It's finding good in all of the chaos and making something beautiful happen.