Week 5 Term 2 2014

A new menu this week:

Soup of the Season
Wholemeal Rolls
Broccoli and Green Beans with Lemon Ricotta and Almonds
Pumpkin Ravioli with a Herb Butter Sauce
Moroccan Chickpea and Couscous Salad

‘Soup of the Season’ is a great item for our menu – it changes every day according to what is available, what the students choose to put in it and what sort of texture they want – ‘smooth’ or ‘lumpy’. Pink Class made a delicious soup on Tuesday – a huge variety of vegetables including onion, pumpkin, kale, cauliflower, broccoli and capsicum – and they chose to blend about half of it and leave the rest solid. On Wednesday Jayden in Red Class made the soup and chose pumpkin, carrot and onion and lots of peas; it was blended until smooth and was excellent. And on Thursday Ryan, Jaime and Libby made a delicious soup also.

The little bread rolls have been very popular – great work from Matthew and Daniel on Tuesday and Aimee on Wednesday. And the Gold Boys did a wonderful job with the rolls – they tasted great and they made them so quickly there was time to make a coleslaw salad as well. Christopher did a good job using the food processor to grate the salad ingredients and both he and Harvey particularly impressed me with the way they served their rolls using tongs.

The broccoli dish was made really well by Steven on Tuesday and by Litiani and Aidan on Wednesday. And on Thursday Zac, Pete and William made a delicious dish too. Steven also did a great job setting the table.

Jack Broadbent was a star on Tuesday – he was the only student making ravioli and participated in every stage – well done Jack!!! And well done to Dominic who also participated in every stage of production.

Silver Class displayed great teamwork when they made the couscous dish on Tuesday. They did a wonderful job setting the table, clearing up too. Well done Silver Class – a great cooking session. Tomas and Jacob made the same dish on Wednesday and were just as good.  On Thursday the couscous salad was made by Frank and Bella – excellent teamwork.

It is so pleasing to see our students spending longer and longer sitting at the dining table, eating a wider range of foods and eating more. On Thursday the food seemed to vanish of the platters before there was time to sit down! Great to see Jaime eat a bread roll and to see William really interested in the food again. Zac enjoyed this week’s menu, especially the chickpeas!

We got new aprons this week. The ones we have been using (4 or 5 days a week for two and a half years) had started to knot up terribly when washed, often taking up to thirty minutes to be unravelled. I contacted Woolworths at Shoreline and asked if they might be able to donate some and they very kindly obliged. As you can see they are very smart with green and black stripes. We gave them the washing machine test and all came out freely! Here is Harvey modelling and apron!

Last weekend I had the opportunity to participate in a Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Workshop at their Learning Centre at Collingwood. This was a public workshop – they run kitchen and garden workshops regularly as fund raisers. On Saturday Guy Grossi (Melbourne restaurateur and ‘My Kitchen Rules’ judge) ran a workshop called ‘Passionate Italian’. We cooked a delicious lamb casserole, spinach and ricotta ravioli in a burnt butter sauce served on walnut pesto, roasted red capsicums and a pear and chocolate tart. Guy brought in a whole lamb and demonstrated how to butcher it!

It was really interesting to see him prepare the ravioli – I got a few tips to help with our classes.

At the end of the cooking session we all sat down to taste the dishes and of course all were delicious. A really worthwhile workshop.