BATH TWP.: Up until this semester, Old Trail eighth-grader Wilson Ha’s kitchen experience topped out at making ramen noodles or maybe toast.
His family cooks.
Him, not so much.
But that changed after he enrolled in chef manager Jay Williams’ new Let’s Cook class for seventh- and eighth-graders that meets twice a week. Williams also teaches an after-school Iron Chef program.
“It was really fun,” Wilson said. “I learned a lot of cooking methods and different flavors that I’d never heard of before.”
Wilson, 14, and the eight other students in the class not only learn terms and techniques in the kitchen, they also go out into the field. Literally.
Williams’ students get up close and personal with their food, foraging for wild-growing produce like scapes, fiddlehead ferns and violets and dandelions and their greens in the woods that surround the school nestled in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. They also pick lettuce and greens from the working farm just up a flight of rustic stairs from the parking lot and a short walk through the grass.
There they can find lettuce and carrots in the three hoop houses and a field. There is also a small aquaponics operation. One day they picked 10 pounds of kale to make kale chips for that day’s school lunch.
Williams, 32, in his second year at Old Trail, wants to make sure the students are equipped with culinary life skills.
“The goal was to address some of those statistics, like something like 80 percent of college students can’t boil an egg,” Williams said. “Here at Old Trail we are fortunate enough to have the property to go foraging. We also have a 4-acre farm next door.”
He sought students’ input in the dishes they wanted to make.
“If you learn how to make the things you like you are more likely to actually prepare them yourself than to just go buy them at the store,” he said.
After 10 years as a chef, he has a thing or two to show them.
In what Williams calls a “root-to-leaf” lesson, the students picked carrots, brought them back to roast and made a carrot-top pesto.
“The mission of the school is our place in the park,” Williams said. “We have a lot of sustainability initiatives. So even in the lunch program we focus on the local, organic, sustainable-type foods and being able to prepare them in a way the kids will like. So I try to do the same type of thing with the cooking program, which is how we ended up foraging. I thought it would be great for the kids to see that not all your food comes from a grocery store. There are things you can go out and find right in your own backyard that are delicious to eat.”
In one lesson, Williams went out and found a bed of ramps, which are wild leeks, that happened to be near a picnic area. He took the class out to harvest the ramps, which they cleaned, sauteed in butter, salt and pepper on a range-top burner and ate right there on the spot next to where they had picked them.
“They thought that was cool,” Williams said. “The setting was beautiful and it was a nice lesson, I thought.” On a recent Friday, the students went out in the woods to find greens for salads to garnish with violets and dandelions. The flowers are edible.
Wilson and classmate Jordan Carter, 14, were surprised at the things they could find in the woods. “When we were picking the ramps and just eating them immediately — they were so good. And that was a surprise,” Wilson said. “Also the carrots, too. I liked how we just picked them from the farm and we just took them back, washed them, roasted them and ate them.”
Jordan has a garden at her home, so eating things she’s just picked is familiar.
“We don’t grow stuff like the things we tried [in the class], but we do grow stuff like tomatoes and cucumbers,” she said. She loves cooking.
In the class, “it was really interesting to see the things you could do that were made from ingredients all around you,” she said.
Wilson said he often does not have the time to cook at home, so he thought the class sounded like a good way to get that experience, have fun and learn about — and eat — different foods.
Jordan does cook often at home and was happy to be able to add more to her school day.
“It became something I really looked forward to,” she said. “We have a beautiful campus, so it’s nice to be able to get out to explore it. I’m glad we’re learning this stuff now ... then we’ll have these skills throughout our entire life.”
The students feel proud of and a connection to their creations. They also have gained an appreciation for the fact that when they go to a restaurant, someone has actually prepared the food for them. There is a lot of hard work that goes into the preparation and presentation.
“My philosophy is just to kind of know our place in the world. Sustainability has always been big to me. I’ve just always wanted to work with local ingredients and cook seasonally,” Williams said.
And that fits into the school’s philosophy. It has a composting program, a wastewater filtering program and a large solar field, Williams said.
“I love teaching the class,” Williams said. “It’s been a lot of fun for me.”
It’s a chance to get out of the kitchen and get to know the students better. It also lets him get to know their tastes. For instance, Wilson had expressed an interest in smoothies, so he was put in charge of finding a recipe for that Friday’s meal.
No, they were not made of ramps and violets. He opted for fruit instead.
Monica L. Thomas can be reached at 330-996-3827 or mthomas@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @MLThomasABJ and www.facebook.com/MLThomasABJ.