Culinary Institute of America's Chef Interns Visit Haldane Elementary School

This week Haldane Elementary School had the pleasure to invite two budding young chefs and Slow Food members from the Culinary Institute of America to teach a cooking class with the 3rd and 4th graders.

As part of Haldane's Farm to School, Chef in the Classroom program, Chef Matt and Chef Sarah visited Mr. Dudar's 3rd grade class and Mrs. Hartford's 4th grade class. The featured vegetable: Butternut Squash. And the recipe they were learning how to prepare was a Butternut Squash Gratin.

After washing hands, the students set to work. They all gathered around the tables and broke into different groups. While Chef Sarah worked with one group chopping onions and dicing squash, 

Chef Matt had the others smashing garlic, grating cheese and cutting up herbs.

Chef Sarah taught her group the safe and proper way to handle a knife. The kids couldn't get enough of chopping. Even the tears from the onions didn't stop them!

All of the students got a chance to work with Chef Matt sautéing the squash with onions, garlic and herbs.

When the preparation of the dish was finished, it was poured into a baking dish, and with "Kitchen Show Magic" and a little help from food service director Cindy Miozzi, the students got to try their culinary creation.

With a lot of enthusiasm, the students named their dish: Butternut Squash-a-Lishious! 

A local farm in Garrison, NY donated 50 pounds of organic butternut squash to the school, and the Haldane Cafeteria served the Butternut Squash-a-Lishious! on October 24th, National Food Day. All the students had the opportunity to sample the dish in a school-wide taste test. 

Parent volunteers served up the samples and students took a survey and kept tally. What was the outcome? A big thumbs up!

Thank you Chefs Matt and Sarah, the Culinary Institute of America, and Cindy Miozzi for a great job  influencing positive change in our students' health by encouraging them to try new foods.

Next Chef in the Classroom featured vegetable: Pumpkin.

Stay tuned to find out more...

http://www.ciachef.edu