I can't believe we are already halfway through our time together this spring. Each morning's group is forming a strong community and the energy is still very high. It is such a privilege to experience Breakfast Around the World together with these young chefs!
Japan is an enticing culinary destination and the kids were interested to learn that a savory dish like miso soup is eaten there for breakfast. This week's recipe required a lot of prep before we got to cooking - we used three types of seaweed (kombu for the broth, wakame for the soup, and nori for garnish) and two types of mushrooms (shiitake and hon shimeji because we couldn't find any enoki at the store). A recipe like miso soup is all about mise en place, the French culinary term for having everything in its place. Everyone worked hard to prep all the ingredients before carefully adding them to our kombu broth in order. When the soup was done, there were a number of skeptical faces until we sat down to eat. One student shouted, "This is the best thing I have ever eaten!" and many others wanted to save some to bring home to their families, they were so proud of what they had accomplished.
Special thanks to Coach Glenn for making a surprise visit and sharing about Chamorro culture with us and to Angie McKee-Brown, the director of innovation and strategy of SFUSD's Future Dining Experience, who joined us on Thursday to learn more about what we're doing. It was a great week.
Our beautiful, colorful table.
We saved the rainbow chard ribs and fed them to our chickens!
The wavy knife (aka the crinkle cutter) is a popular tool and we need to get more of them for the kitchen classroom. We used them to make fun shapes with the garnet yams.
Watermelon radish is local, still in season, and added some whimsy to our soup when cut into wedges.
We cut large sheets of nori into smaller pieces to garnish our soup after we were all served.
The perfect simmer!
Cooking is serious business.
We got some inadvertent smiles with our silly jokes about "miso hungry"...
First graders with one of our beloved special guests this week!
