Chef in the Classroom

By Shannon Henry Kleiber | Photo By Jim Klousia 0

There are more than two dozen cooks in the kitchen, chopping, dicing, sautéing and roasting. As they stir gumbo in massive steel pots, they laugh and ask questions. The air fills with the mouthwatering aroma of simmering onion, garlic, okra, chicken and tomatoes.

The cooks today are all teenagers, members of East High School teacher Natalie Aguirre’s Culinary Arts class. Their guest teachers are David McKercher and Lisa Jacobson, partners and chefs at the Mermaid Café in Madison. McKercher and Jacobson are here as part of a local program called “Chef in the Classroom,” run by the Research, Education, Action and Policy (REAP) on Food Group (Jacobson was the former director of REAP’s Farm to School Program). Chef in the Classroom brings top chefs into Madison schools to teach kids cooking skills, introduce them to more local and seasonal foods, and encourage them through hands-on training to become better and more informed eaters and home cooks. It’s also fun, and maybe useful, for the kids to meet chefs in the community, as they might someday consider work in a food- or farm-related industry.

“This is our opportunity to show kids they can cook for themselves,” says Jacobson. It’s one thing, she points out, to tell students to eat better, and completely another to personally introduce them to the tastes and textures of fresh foods and teach them to chop and use a stove on their own. Most of the classes are taught in two parts: one day the kids learn about the dish and ingredients and begin cooking, the second day they finish cooking and—the big reward—get to eat what they have created.

Chef in the Classroom was launched in 2005, originally the brainchild of Tory Miller, executive chef and co-proprietor of L’Etoile and Graze Gastropub, who still regularly teaches with the program at Sherman Middle School. Currently, Sherman, East and Cherokee Middle Schools use the program. Other local chefs, who all volunteer their time, have included Joey Dunscombe of the Weary Traveler, Peter Robertson of RP’s Pasta and Josh Perkins of Willy Street Co-op. Some favorite dishes have been chicken soup, calzones, omelets, lamb patties and ravioli.

The schools participating in the program have a high percentage of students who qualify for the free or reduced lunch through the Madison public school district, so it directly affects the students here who need it most. “These kids are often not in control of where their food comes from,” says Jacobson.

This particular day at East, the gumbo is accompanied by baked sweet potato fries, rice and a spinach salad. The cooks have a large kitchen to work in, with eight ovens, four sinks, several long stainless steel prep tables, and many cabinets in two shades of orange. The food itself is beautiful and fresh from Jordandal Farms and Driftless Organics, rounded out by some farmers market finds.