By: Helena Stallings, Culinary Arts Student
It is said that since pre made food has become more readily and widely available, we have lost 2 generations of people who know how to cook. For many high school students, and for many people in general, cooking consists of putting a frozen burrito in the microwave and reheating it. Our society has regressed to consuming primarily prepackaged, processed and preserved foods, using as minimal time to cook as possible. In fact most of the population never cooks and simply goes out to eat during the week. However the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts is making waves to change the mentality behind preparing your own food, and the ones most excited to be involved are high schoolers.
During the week of June 9-13th, Escoffier held a Teen Cooking Techniques Workshop as a part of their Home Cook Classes, with students ages ranging between 13-16 years old. Each day the students had 1 hour of lecture where Chef Ashlea Tobeck would explain the recipes and procedures for the day’s meal. Then the students would help set up the kitchen and begin preparing food. The menus ranged from grilled steak and veggies to biscuits and gravy, and from fruit pastries to pasta. Each student had the opportunity to try any recipe they wanted, while helping out their classmates and learning the methods they were using. At the end of the class, the tables were set and it was hard to find a student that wasn’t smiling as they loaded their plates with all of the food they had cooked. It was fun to see the excitement in their eyes while they rolled out the pasta dough they had made and to know that the 2 generation gap of knowledgeable cooks is quickly starting to close
