The Gist: I volunteered at Culver City High School as a Guest Chef at their Culinary Arts Class. It was my first time teaching teenagers to
cook and it was a blast!
As I looked around the table of students eager to learn how
to make tomato-basil bruschetta, the first thing that came to mind was… these
kids are huge! I’ve taught my cooking
class at elementary schools all over LA where the oldest kids were in 5th
grade, but on Thursday, Sep 29th at 8:05
a.m. I was surrounded by teenagers
at Culver City High
School .
I was a special guest chef that day at their Culinary Arts
class…which was amazing to me because I never even had a Culinary Arts class
when I was a teen attending high school in Ventura ,
CA .
Their teacher Carolyn Caldwell called me to get some tips on how to
teach a cooking class to kids and I offered to help out in her class one
morning. As an Eagle Scout, I’ve always
enjoyed doing community service, and this was a great way to share my passion
for Italian cooking with kids outside my regular after-school cooking
class.
As I transported two boxes of cooking equipment through the
school, I walked by every clique and high school stereotype under the sun, from
jocks to geeks, and knew my cooking class would bring them all together.
The first period of kids arrived and looked at me with
surprise, wondering who I was. I greeted
them with a friendly “Ciao!” and asked if they were ready to make some
food. Their eyes lit up. “We’re gonna eat something?” one of them
asked. “Of course!” I said.
This would be their first lesson actually making food, as their
classroom was undergoing a deep cleaning and all the stoves and ovens were
unavailable for use. Their last lesson
involved chopping lots of onions to better their knife skills and the mere
thought that they be able to eat something (and not cry) produced palpable
excitement.
The Lesson Begins
With a group of 26 kids in each 1-hour period, I divided the
class in half so I would two 30-minute lessons.
The students quickly cleaned up, put on their aprons and waited next to
a cutting board to chop tomatoes. At one
point I looked to my left and saw a rather odd sight: one teenager was wearing
his leather jacket under his apron! He
even rolled up the jacket’s sleeves.
“The things teenagers do to look cool,” I thought as I chuckled and
reached for a tomato.
We chopped the tomato into bite size chunks and made a
flavorful salad by mixing them with torn basil leaves, extra virgin olive oil,
red wine vinegar and salt and pepper. I
purposefully underseasoned each salad so the students could taste it and learn
to adjust the salt and pepper amounts as needed.
Next up I heated up one of my portable electric pans and we
toasted slices of baguette with a little
olive oil. When they toasted on one
side, we rubbed the bread with a raw garlic clove. We then topped each slice of garlic toast
with the tomato salad and with a loud “Mangia Bene!” (“Eat Well!”) Took a bite.
More and more kids
Soon the next group arrived at the table, even more eager to
cook after watching their classmates chow down.
In 30 minutes, we were done and after two more periods of class it was 11:30 a.m. and I had already taught over 70 kids how to make tomato-basil
bruschetta! Exhausted, I cleaned up
and headed out, as I had a cooking class to teach that afternoon at St. Martin
of Tours elementary school where we’d be making homemade fettucine pasta tossed
in fresh basil pesto.
Overall, I loved seeing how making bruschetta brought teenagers
from all walks of life together in the name of good, healthy food. Cooking truly is a universal activity that
everyone can enjoy whether you’re a jock, nerd, cheerleader, goth or cool guy
in a leather jacket.
The next post will feature my bruschetta recipe, so check it
out next Tuesday!
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