The wonderful Wegmans Food Markets provided the Southeast Steuben County Library Teen Cooking Club a free cooking demonstration for the February 2018 class.
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| Let's Go Shopping |
Upon entering the cafe' to meet students, I encountered this welcoming table where Chef Andy was placing ingredients at each setting. In order to get a donation from Wegmans, I needed to apply online for a grant. I requested a cooking demonstration similar to a Saturday Young Chefs event that Wegmans hosts to guests at a low cost.
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| Each Place Setting |
Each place setting had a plastic cutting board, appropriate for younger chefs, a plate with uncut vegetables, a plastic knife, chop sticks and gloves. We were excited to honor the Chinese New Year with a noodle bowl. Noodles are a good luck food, representing longevity. Once our host covered some facts about Chinese New Year, each student received a chef's hat to start preparing foods.
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| Fashionable Friday |
Once we donned our caps, the preparation began. One important rule Chef Andy discussed is a term "Mise en place," (MEEZ ahn plahs) which french meaning "everything in it's place." The idea is to have all of your ingredients washed, cut, measured and placed in your cooking area BEFORE you start cooking the recipe. This is a rule I often overlook in my kitchen, but find can help cut the chaos in our Union Hall kitchen.
Lessons for the future!
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| Radish |
This little red veggie is a radish. Most student were not familiar with this ingredient. It has a little spicy flavor and creates a nice crunch in soups and salads. The color red is a sign of good luck in Chinese tradition, so it was very appropriate for this recipe.
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| Concentrated Cutting |
Although the lighting was tough for photography, you can see our chefs concentrating on cutting their food to their preferred sizes using only plastic butter knives. This is more of a challenge than we normally face. We use real knives in Teen Cooking Club. Everyone was grateful that we do not use plastic cutlery all of the time!
Long Noodles
We discovered some new ingredients as we prepared our soups. Nira Grass was very new to me, but the description states that it is a garlic chive, so I realize I have it growing in my perennial garden. Shanghai, a vegetable that looks like bok choy, is leafy green that mildly frightened these students. The great part of this class was learning new ingredients and how to prepare them, but not being required to eat them. All students were happy to chop, but many eliminated the greens from their soup when the broth was added. Before any veggies were added to our cups, we took a serving of long noodles.
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| Noodles for Longevity |
Long noodles represent longevity in Chines tradition. It is suggested to only bite the noodle when it is completely in your mouth. Biting it too soon can shorten life or give bad luck. Adding our veggies to the bowl was step two. Step three was adding broth.
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| Gather for the Goodness |
Everyone gathered around the demonstration table to get their broth. Our chef discussed ways of making broth from scratch, but showed the prepared package we can conveniently purchase. Included in the broth was soy sauce, oyster sauce, garlic, ginger, touch of salt and pepper, plus some thai peanut sauce for anyone without a peanut allergy.
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| Yummy! |
The vegetables were raw, but the noodles were cooked al dente, "to the tooth". Adding the hot broth only heightened the vibrancy of color of the vegetables, but left them crunchy. I really liked the variety of textures in this recipe.
Mangia!
The final step in this redcipe was to eat. As my Italian grandmother would say when the food was ready, "Mangia!" After our exclusive cooking demonstration, there was still time left to shop through the store to quantify the value of our meal. We discovered that we could serve the fifteen people in our group the same size portion of soup for $2.20, which is less than half the cost of a medium sized prepared soup in the market. This proved the value of cooking from scratch at home. It was tricky to "shop" with 15 members of our Teen Cooking Club family, but it worked and everyone enjoyed the results!
That's a wrap for this month's installment of Teen Cooking Club. Check back in March to see what edible wraps we concocted in our next class.
Thanks for visiting,
-Erica
