We continued our exploration of all the food cultures that make up America with Rashin Kheiriyeh’s picture book Saffron Ice Cream about an Iranian American child’s first visit to the beach in New York City. In the kitchen, the first graders worked with saffron, cinnamon, fresh turmeric, candied citrus peel, raisins, and dried rose petals and made havij polo, a Persian carrot rice dish. Everyone marveled at the vibrantly colored ingredients, especially the turmeric, which dyed our fingers and the worktables a brilliant yellow.
The sweetest thing about this week’s lesson was the fact that our recipe incorporated two ingredients made by other grade levels during their own Edible Social Studies units this year. The fourth and fifth graders were studying the intersection of the food system and climate change last semester, and during a lesson on food waste, they candied the peel of lemons, oranges, and limes - turning stuff that would normally be thrown away into something not only edible but considered a delicacy.
Just before serving the havij polo, the first grade chefs drizzled a simple syrup over the rice that was the byproduct of candied kumquats the second graders made last week for their final class on the farmworkers movement and the history of agricultural labor in California. We love intergenerational moments in the kitchen classroom almost as much as we love all the interesting flavors in this Persian rice!
