The Educator Gets a Lesson

Last Friday--a day that may be remembered as the only warm sunny day on record for this May--while the rest of the world was moving along apace and going through its quotidian rituals, I broke from my kitchen routine and made tacos for school lunch at Dover High School.  It may seem strange for the chef of a little Portsmouth bistro to be scooping from the steam table at one of our region’s largest public school cafeterias, but I gotta say, it was right up there with the most edifying experiences I have had in recent months, if not years.

To be clear, this was not my first time cooking in a school.  I have worked directly with small groups of students at New Heights in Portsmouth, and I have made smoothies for my kids’ first grade classes.  And, around the holidays last year, I made beet and spinach pasta for the elementary students at Central School in South Berwick, working at the behest of Kathy Gunst, a fellow food blogger, chef and cookbook writer who heeded the summons of Michelle Obama and attended the Chefs Move to Schools kickoff event on the White House lawn last year.  (Also representing our area at that event were Mark Segal of the 100 Club and Dan Dumont of Wentworth by the Sea.) I could not rearrange my schedule on the short notice I was given, and still regret not having attended the event.  However, one needn’t stand on the White House lawn to be inspired by Mrs. Obama’s philosophy: the way to improve school lunches in America is not to preach to the parents, but to reach the students who eat the lunches.  Cultivate the non-GMO farm field, as it were, and they will come.

So, back to the Dover High event.  I had been invited by Amy Winans, UNH Hospitality maven and indomitable force behind much of the knowledge transfer that goes on between generations on the food front in our area.  Amy, along with her husband Dan (who heads up UNH’s semi-revolutionary EcoGastronomy program), have positioned themselves at the forefront of the fight for fair, local and sustainable food systems in the seacoast region.  As a rule of thumb, when Amy or Dan asks me to participate in dinners or lecture to their classes, I don’t hesitate.  The power of their persuasion is not merely political; they are also uncommonly nice people.

My assignment, issued by Amy, was to produce a sample dish for 300-plus growing, demanding and sometimes vocally defiant high school kids.  The sample had to be built around the idea of locally sourced ingredients, and that was—it turns out—the easiest part.  A Maine farmer ponied up 25 pounds of beef, a New Hampshire farmer pitched in black beans and lettuces, and so recipe ideas quickly turned to tacos.  I made a gallon of roasted chile salsa the day before, spilled about two cups on the passenger seat of my car, and the rest was a matter of waking up really early and getting to class on time.

The Dover High School cafeteria—a far cry from what I had expected--was stocked with hundred-gallon steam kettles, Volkswagen-size standing mixers and seriously high quality industrial equipment.  All surfaces were spotless and food very well respected and handled.  I quickly realized that the problem with Dover’s school lunch, like that of so many other school systems in America, lies not with the facilities or the staff but with the food the eager and talented crew has to work with.  In short, subsidized foods are crap.  They have to be, in order to get calories into the kids at the lowest possible cost to the government, the school systems and—ultimately—the parents.  Even the most endowed public school dining budgets can only afford to buy the lowest-end commodity, and so that crap (which, unfortunately, can actually taste pretty good sometimes) goes into the kids who will grow up to make future food policy via their own shopping priorities.  Bottom line: we can’t keep teaching health and nutrition in the same schools that are shunning those values in their kitchens. 

So how do we twist that paradigm until the inconsistencies shake out?  How do we make good food a higher priority in the hallowed halls of education while simultaneously making local and responsible ingredients available at affordable prices?  The answer, obviously, is quite complex.  Judging by the recent presentations made by Dan Winans’ EcoG students at UNH, solutions might emerge in the upcoming generation of food policy makers. 

Back again to the classroom…..After greeting me at the DHS door, Amy introduced me to her charming and cheerful assistants—Lauren, Sarah and Kim—who were volunteering for their second such event at Dover High.  I would later find out that these young ladies had signed up not only to chop vegetables for a tyrannical chef but also to schlep the samples canapé-style through the dining hall, where they would be besieged by students clambering for free taco samples.  Brave is not a strong enough word for these dedicated young women.

In short time, I met the cafeteria staff.  Mark Covell, the District’s Food Service Administrator, could not have been more receptive to my intrusion on his turf.  He made me feel at home and played gracious host for the duration of my visit.

Sue, the Assistant FSA, gave me a tour while rattling off her past cooking credentials, which were very impressive indeed, and Melinda (one of the key cooks) later came to my aid at the steam kettle.  Melinda’s culinary heritage included New Orleans and Las Vegas, combining the Old Guard and the New Frontier food cities, both of which would inform her culinary style if she were allowed to incorporate it more into the lunch program.  I suggested that I come back in the fall to do shrimp po-boys.  Mmmm.

I didn’t bring an apron, and the one I was loaned was a disposable sheet of thin plastic with a neck strap.  My new Culinary Rule Number One: Don’t work with large, boiling stockpots on a gas range when wearing a thin plastic apron.  It’s a good rule, especially for chefs who should know better.

I came away from Dover High School with a melted apron and a strong sense that those cooks I worked with are not only willing to learn, but already have the desire to do more with local foods that are whole, safe and nutritious alternatives to the “spicy fried chicken burger” that was being offered on the day we were in the kitchen.  I overheard Melinda, the Head Cook, say to her boss, “See, we could be doing this [pointing to the homemade salsa] instead of getting that canned stuff.”

I haven’t seen the student surveys that were passed out by Amy’s charming assistants, but I hear they were generally quite positive, meaning that high school students enjoyed the fresh taco experiment and crave an alternative to the packaged, processed and insalubrious status quo. 

For me, the defining moment of the day came when three jocks--the kind of linebacker material that would have eaten my lunch and then made me pay for it in high school (not that that ever happened, but you get the picture)--came into the kitchen while we were wrapping up the third seating.  One of them hollered at me, “Hey, are you the chef who made the tacos?” 

Reluctantly, pretending to be busier than I was, I replied, “Yes.”  Even though I’m beefier than I was in high school, I think my voice cracked a little, just for old time’s sake. 

The three boys (I say boys, but they were young men of great mass and height) approached me and reached out their hands in what appeared to be the conventional, old-school handshake gesture.  Unsure of how to respond, I went with what I knew and shook their hands without slaps, snaps, palm-slides or fist-pounds.  They seemed to fully understand the gesture and reciprocated in kind. 

“That was really good,” one of the three jocks said, stretching out the first syllable in “really” so that it hung in the air like a game-winning field goal.

Phew.  Happy jocks.  Happy chef.  Amazing how food can bring people together, eh?