Chef in the Classroom

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.

Standing at a demonstration station in front of the kids seated at large round tables, McKercher first shows how to cut an onion and then how to debone a chicken. “Respect the animal and the food will be good,” says McKercher, holding up the whole chicken. It’s clear some of the kids are not used to working with a whole raw bird. McKercher assures them that when they see him cut it up once, they’ll be able to do it themselves. And then he does it simply and clearly as they all watch in silence, until he cuts straight down through the ribs and one student says excitedly, “Bam!” He saves the backs and bones to make chicken stock later, then McKercher pulls out the nasty stuff—the heart and other organs—and throws it on the table. This, he says, is what they make chicken nuggets out of. Not the good parts. They put this in a grinder and say it’s chicken. The kids grimace and say “yuck.”

McKercher gives the students a little history on gumbo, a dish traditionally made with whatever meat and vegetable ingredients people had around. He introduces many of them to okra for the first time, advising that the fresh is much better than the frozen. Next up, the students tie long hair back, wash hands, and add the garlic to the pan first as it takes longer to cook than the other vegetables.

Not surprisingly, other schools have wanted to add Chef in the Classroom to their curriculum. REAP is trying to help more schools get started by creating a how-to handbook for classrooms. According to Sarah Elliott, REAP’s current Farm to School program director, the handbook will include large-scale recipes, tips on keeping food journals, and advice on introducing new foods to kids; Elliott estimates the manual will be available in about a year. She’d also like to get the kids involved in choosing and buying the ingredients. The underlying philosophy, she says, is “food just doesn’t come from the grocery store shelf.”

Once the school understands how the program works, then they will need to find a teacher or chef to run it. “There is a superstar allure around local chefs,” Elliott says, adding that REAP will use Cherokee as a model for the handbook.

At Cherokee, JoAnne Jensen teaches family and consumer education to middle schoolers and has been running a Chef in the Classroom program for 7th graders for three years. She says she knows some of the professional chefs have inspired kids to go into the cooking business. Teaching cooking and nutrition can be a challenge. Many of her students have fast-paced lives and eat a lot of fast food. “These are kids who are afraid of food. They freak out and fear whole foods because they haven’t seen them,” Jensen says. She does not win over every kid. But when she does, the effect on the student—and his or her family—is profound.

They are learning, says Jensen, no less than how to leave a smaller carbon footprint, how to do a little bit to improve the economy, the environment and their own bodies. When they have ownership of what they eat, they understand it and value it more. At the same time, they are having fun cooking together and enjoying a delicious meal.