Ida B. Wells Art Show!

  

It is full speed ahead for our school's annual Art Show this week and we are excited to be serving food from our Family Recipe Project!  Please join us this Thursday, 3:30pm - 6pm, it is going to be a fun time for sure!

   

Folding Phyllo

I remember the second half of the 3rd quarter from last year.  The weather isn't the only dampening thing in life, and you can sense struggle in many people's lives.  But the students themselves stay resilient in a way too, looking for more to do.  A student quietly requested another silent class, his tone sounded like he wanted "to get things done."   Another mentioned the bastilla we had made at the beginning of the quarter.  I love how the students really do seem to know what the next step should be.

We folded a variety of phyllo triangles:  a spanikopita filling (spinach & feta), a sweet potato samosa like filling & classic baklava "mini" triangles.  It was very satisfying to see the number of triangles that resulted.

The next day we baked them off and enjoyed our samplings, with more than enough to share.

Avglemeno Soup, Phyllo Triangles, Apple-Fennel-Radish Salad

Ingenuity

I grew up here in San Francisco on those barbeque pork buns.  They had already become a grab and go option in Chinatown and on Clement Street, and most of my students are familiar with them too.  It turns out that making the dough is pretty easy, once you have experimented a little with yeasted breads.  The night before we planned to roll and fill the dumplings I suddenly realized we needed 3/4 inch rolling pins, having only one I had found for rolling small amounts of pasta. It was late in the evening, no way to get to an open hardware store.  So I looked in the storage closet and found a welcome volunteer:

The carpenter side of my husband was very proud.

The next day went well, as we rolled and steamed the buns (filled with a mushroom/tofu/ginger filling).  They rounded out our "Pacific Rim" meal:

Chicken Adobo over Rice, Sauteed Choy with Peppers, Steamed Vegetarian Bao, Individual Egg Custards

More soon, as we get into the fourth quarter there are several projects ahead beyond our classroom cooking that will be fun to share!

Week 2: Let's get chopping.

What I love about our classes is that underneath the mellow exterior, high schoolers really are active people.  And many have chosen our class because they don't want to sit at a desk, they want to come in and work (although tasting the results is certainly an excellent secondary incentive). 

But what do you do with 40 students who want to learn how to chop? Yes, onions are the classic practice chopping item, just having roughly 20 students at a time chopping onions is, well, painful.  This time we used carrots and leeks to make a super simple carrot soup to go with our North African favorite: Chicken Bastilla -- and I was reminded that 25 pounds of chopped carrots does indeed make at least 4 gallons of carrot soup.  Gulp!

Then came the next question, as we were plating:  What does "garnish" mean?  So we got into garnish.

  

Carrot soup with chermoula, cilantro and yoghurt cream, individual bastilla pies, strawberry mango lassi.

Our First Week of Hospitality In The New Year

It was the first time I really made a good meal like that.  Different. Something that I wouldn't have tried, but glad I did b/c it was good.--2nd period student

I enjoyed it immensely.  It was really fun learning the steps and actually doing hands on work was good. -- 3rd period student

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Italian Frittata with Tomato Sauce, Salad with Oranges & Fennel, Italian Almond Cupcakes (Torta Di Mandorla)

Not a problem.  In the third quarter we seem to go from orientation into measuring into teamwork pretty quickly, even though most of the students are new to the class.  I love the pride and sense of accomplishment.  I will include a link to the rest of the student quotes, the above is an accurate representation of the class sensibility.

The students are raising the bar for me, not the other way around!  Pretty cool.