Breakfast Around the World Week 11: China

It was fun to get back into action this week after the spring break. We made a traditional breakfast from China that has many names: zhou and xifan in Mandarin, jook in Cantonese, and congee, which comes from a Tamil word. I grew up eating xifan every Saturday morning when my grandmother would cook all the leftover rice from the week into a hot porridge that we ate with cucumber pickles, pickled mustard, and a dried pork product the internet tells me is called “pork floss” or “meat wool” in English. The students would have inevitably laughed a lot if I had known to share this with them!

The zhou is very easy to make, but plan ahead as the porridge takes time to break down and develop the desired ratio of rice to water. We had the pot going by 8am when the kids arrived, so they got to work on various toppings to serve with the porridge when it was ready. They stir-fried bok choy with garlic and ginger in our new cast-iron woks (thank you, District 8 participatory budgeting process!), made cucumber pickles for the next day’s class, chopped braised tofu, grated ginger, plucked cilantro leaves, and sliced green onion. We also had goji berries, white pepper, sesame oil, soy sauce, and chili oil as garnishes. No two bowls were the same when we sat down to enjoy the meal together.

2nd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 9

For our last class with the second graders for the semester, we talked about the history of flavored ice, which dates back 5000 years, and watched a video about food waste and what we can do about it. Our final recipe, “ugly” citrus sorbet, brought together many of the concepts we’ve been exploring over the past nine weeks. Wednesday was the vernal equinox and the first day of spring, so we used the bounty of the winter season one last time. Making sorbet incorporates two forms of food preservation: sugaring and freezing. All the citrus the students worked with came from local farms. The citrus was labeled “ugly” even though it tasted delicious and provided the same nutritional value as more expensive, traditionally beautiful fruit. By participating in a local food system that supports farmers, we help reduce waste and continue to advocate for healthful food to be accessible to all members of our community.

The students combined the juice of several varieties of citrus with salt, simple syrup, and corn syrup. We then froze the sorbet in ice cream makers while we made our toppings: freshly whipped cream, shaved local Guittard chocolate, ribbons of fresh spearmint, Tango tangerine pieces, and chopped candied ginger. The class didn’t allow for enough time to eat the same sorbet we made, so Ms. Katie and I made sorbet for Ms. Reynold’s class, Ms. Reynold’s class made sorbet for Ms. Butler’s class, and we will serve the sorbet Ms. Butler’s class made at the PFC meeting on April 9th.

It’s enough just to look at all the smiling faces below. See you next year, second graders!

Breakfast Around the World Week 10: Venezuela and Peru

We made a breakfast dish from South America this week called arepas. These flat corn cakes originated during the Pre-Columbian era and continue to be popular in present-day Venezuela and Colombia. The dough is a simple mixture of pre-cooked corn meal, salt, and water. The students had a lot of fun forming the dough into balls and then flattening the arepas by hand. We were lucky to have a special guest on Tuesday and Thursday, Ms. Janette, who is Peruvian and taught us how to make a delicious drink called chicha morada from purple corn, limes, sugar, and a few spices.

As accompaniments to the arepas, students made their own butter, sautéd sweet potatoes, and crumbled fresh cheese. We slathered the cakes with the butter and ate them with beans, the sweet potatoes, the cheese, and pickled onions. The savory arepas paired so nicely with the sweet and slightly spicy chica. We’ll be serving more chica made by Janette at our spring event, so get your tickets now!

2nd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 8

We started class this week with a mix and mingle activity. Students moved around the classroom while listening to excerpts from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and were asked to share with a partner their thoughts about winter, the season we are leaving behind, and what they’re looking forward to about spring, which is just around the corner. Epic second-grade ballet and air guitar ensued. Then we watched a video about how different cities around the world celebrate spring.

In the kitchen, students got to work with the new salad spinners and food processors The Breakfast Project recently acquired with the District 8 participatory budgeting money we won last year. The food processor bowls filled with fresh spring goodies like green garlic, fava leaves, mint, and dill. Instead of the pine nuts traditionally used in a pesto recipe, we used dried edamame. Second graders added a little lemon juice, salt, and pepper, then processed away while drizzling in extra-virgin olive oil. We tasted as a table and adjusted the seasonings, then slathered the bright green pesto on some Tartine sesame bread and topped it with the winter refrigerator pickles we made last week. A final dusting of edible (Brassica!) flower petals from the school garden and some Parmigiano Reggiano cheese completed these mini edible works of art. Spring is definitely in the air!

Breakfast Around the World Week 9: Greece

A parent from our community generously donated two June smart ovens to us, so we thought we’d give baking a go this week. Just in time for Pi Day, students made galaktoboureko, or milk pie, from Greece, which is basically a custard made from semolina (not dissimilar in taste and texture to Cream of Wheat cereal) wrapped in many layers of buttered phyllo dough. Everyone had a lot of fun working with the tissue-thin sheets of phyllo. Because our class time doesn’t allow for the entire start-to-finish baking process, which involves letting the pie cool and drizzling it with sugar syrup, each class baked pies for the next day’s class. This means we had many slices to serve at the parent faculty club meeting on Tuesday night as well as to give away to the incredible teaching and support staff at Harvey Milk every morning this week.

The phyllo is very forgiving - if it tears, it just adds another flaky layer to the final result. I must say the pies the kids made were simple to prepare yet looked magnificent and tasted even better. Hooray for pi and pie!

Rock and Rollers: Week 1B

We were delighted to welcome back to the kitchen this week some of the older chefs we haven’t seen since our Soup Squad classes in December. Our first rolled food comes from Mexico, home of the burrito. Students made a fresh salsa, grated cheese, and prepared a pot of Mexican rice with fresh garlic, tomato paste, cumin, and chili powder. While the rice cooked we played a rousing game from Mexico called Lotería! Then we assembled our burritos and listened to the Mexican band Los Teen Tops, which reminded us all a lot of the music of Elvis Presley.

When class was over, students were excited to make extra burritos to share with their teachers and friends in the rest of the after-school program!

2nd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 7

We started class this week by discussing how humans have used the art of food preservation to slow the decomposition process of animals and plants for thousands of years. Preserving the summer bounty not only ensured that families could survive through the harsh winter months, but processes like fermentation also added new flavors (e.g. milk preserved as cheese) and nutritional value (e.g. cabbage preserved as kimchi or sauerkraut) that weren’t present in the original ingredients.

In the Bay Area, we’re lucky to have a winter bounty in addition to a summer one, so we made winter refrigerator pickles this week from local produce, preserving watermelon radishes, carrots, and romanesco. We’ll eat them in class next week. Many students were excited to realize that pickles can be made with practically any ingredient you want, not just with cucumbers.

While our pickling brines were cooling, we did a tasting of sweet peas, comparing freshly shelled and blanched ones with peas that had been canned, frozen, and freeze dried. We looked at the cost of each process and talked about pros and cons of each type. Canning, for example, allows peas to have a long shelf life and is a good candidate for an earthquake emergency kit you plan to store for many months if not years. Freezing, on the other hand, maintains the vibrant color of the peas, but will expire sooner than canned peas.

Our young scientists used all their senses to compare and contrast the different peas and filled out a matrix with their notes. In our closing circle, each chef announced their favorite type of pea and we tallied up the votes to see which pea was the winner. A few students decided in the end that it was most delicious to mix all the different kinds of peas together! My favorite written observation from the two classes was that fresh peas felt “good for the soul.”

Breakfast Around the World Week 8: Mexico

We’ve made a number of delicious Mexican breakfasts in the school kitchen over the past few semesters, but never simple yet satisfying huevos rancheros. The dish was so popular we had several chefs waiting at the door at 8 a.m. asking if they could come to class even though they had cooked the morning before!

One group fried the tortillas while another group made pico de gallo, a fresh salsa that is also known as salsa Mexicana for its tribute to the colors of the Mexican flag. By now students are pros at frying eggs, so the meal came together quickly: they spread each tortilla with refried black beans, topped it with an egg and the salsa, and garnished with a squeeze of fresh lime juice, sprigs of cilantro, slices of avocado, and some pickled onions we had leftover from last week’s class. All three mornings the atmosphere was calm, collaborative, and fun. I’m really proud of how far our young cooks have come since the beginning of the year. ¡Salud!

2nd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 6

This week we worked with another popular member of the Brassica genus, collard greens, and a rare ingredient in The Breakfast Project kitchen, bacon! We discussed the culinary tradition of eating stewed greens with bread to soak up their cooking juices, which is found in many countries across the African continent. Starting in the 1600s, enslaved African people took the ingredients they had access to in Colonial America and applied traditional cooking methods from their homelands, creating new dishes that had never existed before. We watched a video of Dadisi Olutosin, a chef from Atlanta, Georgia, talk about the collard greens he grew up eating in the South and how he now prepares the dish with overt Caribbean and West Indian influences like peanuts and coconut milk.

There’s no denying the results are delicious when you wait for collards to become tender and you achieve the perfect balance of savory, tart, sweet, and heat from bacon, vinegar, sugar, and hot sauce. The collards the second graders prepared were featured last night at the Black History Dinner and Honor Roll Celebration. It was really meaningful to see students take such pride in sharing their work with their families!

Breakfast Around the World Week 7: Australia

The first thing a student said on Tuesday when we introduced the country and recipe for the day was, “Aren’t avocados originally from Mexico?” Beaten at our own game, we had some explaining to do. Avocados are from the Americas, and eating avocado with grains has been around for thousands of years in both Central and South American indigenous cultures. In the early 1990s, a restaurant in Sydney popularized the “avocado toast” that we now find all over the Bay Area and on social media. This week, we pickled our own onions and made fresh ricotta as a nod to Australia’s contribution to this larger-than-life food’s story.

Over three days of classes, we had lots of variations in humidity due to the rainy weather and subsequently got totally different results with our cheesemaking. It got us thinking about offering a food science-themed class this fall where students can go deeper in their exploration of what variables affect the cooking process and the finished result. What do you think?

We had lots of extra pickled onions on Thursday and happily served them to the full house at the Black History Dinner and Honor Roll Celebration. They might make a comeback next week, too, when we make (yet another?) dish from Mexico.

Rock and Rollers: Week 5A

We had a great crew this week for our after-school class featuring a roll from the Philippines called lumpia. You can put any vegetables of your choice inside; we used sugar snap peas, Japanese sweet potato, carrots, cabbage, and mung bean sprouts. First, the students prepped the filling ingredients, then we stir-fried the mixture over high heat in a wok, adding a simple sauce of soy sauce, cornstarch, and brown sugar.

Thus far our rolls have had round wrappers (i.e. tortillas, roti, rice paper) or a funky shape like a grape leaf. Lumpia wrappers are square. Our pro chefs made 25 rolls per table in no time, then we fried them in avocado oil and enjoyed them with a simple dipping sauce made from vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, and sambal chili sauce for a little heat. It was a rewarding class because many of the kids were familiar with the Chinese spring roll (the precursor to the Filipino lumpia) as a food, but none of us had ever made them from scratch before. We were too busy enjoying the finished product to remember to document how beautiful the golden brown rolls were at the end of class, but you can use your imagination!

2nd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 5

Continuing on our journey exploring local winter produce, this week we made a recipe that featured the Brassica genus of plants, also called cole crops or cruciferous vegetables. The word cole comes from the Latin word caulis, which means “stem” or “stalk,” and the word cruciferous comes from the New Latin Cruciferae, which refers to the plants’ cross-shaped flowers.

In the Bay Area, we are lucky to be able to grow Brassica vegetables year round, but in the winter, the many different varieties available can make an otherwise slow-producing time of the year particularly exciting. Brassicas include common household favorites like broccoli and kale, but also include wasabi, rapeseed (from which canola oil is made), horseradish, and mustard. The students were very curious about how mustard comes from a plant, so we discussed how the cross-shaped flowers eventually become seed pods and how the seeds in turn can be ground up with vinegar and salt to make the condiment we are all familiar with on hot dogs.

These pancakes are inspired by the Japanese dish okonomiyaki. Okonomi means “what you like” and yaki means “cooked” and this is a recipe you can put anything you want into. In class, we used Tokyo turnips, kohlrabi (which the kids loved snacking on raw), lacinato (aka dino) kale, purple and green cabbage, and green garlic (not a Brassica but it never hurts to throw a little taste of spring into a winter meal!).

We also talked about how rich in vitamins Brassicas are and how eating fruits and vegetables that are deeply colored (like the kohlrabi and purple cabbage) is especially good for you. Like citrus, Brassicas are high in vitamin C, a particularly ingenious way for nature to help us fight off the flu and the cold during the winter months.

Before heading into the kitchen, we checked in on the students’ cured squash seeds from last week. We watched a short video featuring Eatwell Farm founder Nigel Walker talking about saving seed. Ms. Reynolds mentioned that her students will be starting the seeds in the classroom for transplanting when it’s warmer either at home or in the school garden.

Breakfast Around the World Week 6: Belgium

Next week will mark the one-year anniversary of the first class we ever taught as The Breakfast Project. That first week we made waffles with the kids, and we’ve decided we’re going to make it a tradition during a week in February from now on in celebration of the milestone.

This overnight recipe is versatile (use any combination of grains as long as you keep about half of the base all-purpose white wheat flour) and delivers a ton of flavor due to the long fermentation process. It’s also a recipe young people can do every step of with confidence, including the most important one - licking the whipped cream bowl at the end!

We discussed the official languages of Belgium and looked at a map of Western Europe, noticing how French, German, and Dutch are spoken in the countries that border Belgium as well. A couple of our students used to live in Belgium and could attest to our fun fact about the mind-boggling large amount of chocolate sold in the Brussels Airport every day.

2nd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 4

We continued our celebration of seasonal produce this week by learning about winter squash and making a simple soup from four different varieties: Sugar Pie pumpkin, Blue Hubbard, Butternut, and Acorn. Students discussed what differentiates fruits like squash from vegetables and the differences between summer squash like zucchini (ripens in warm weather, soft exterior, should be eaten soon after harvest) and winter squash (ripens in cool weather, hard exterior after curing in the fields, lasts many months after curing). We read a book called Benji and the 24 Pound Banana Squash with Room 207 and a book called From Seed to Pumpkin with Room 209.

The soup was delicious, but the most exciting part is yet to come. Both classes saved the squash seeds and will be curing them in the classroom next week. All students can take some seeds home to plant or start them in the classroom and do a planting activity in the school garden with Ms. Mallory when the weather warms up!

Breakfast Around the World Week 5: Indonesia

Fried rice is one of the great breakfasts of the world, and this week our students made a version featuring seasonal vegetables and the flavors of Indonesia. We fried our own crispy shallots for garnish, and made a spice paste with garlic, turmeric, coconut sugar, and star anise. Adding tomato paste, soy sauce, and soy-chili sauce to the mix brought the dish to a new level. It was slightly sweet, fiery hot, soft, and crunchy all at the same time. A LOT of water was consumed before the start of school!

2nd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 3

This week we talked about community supported agriculture (CSA) and used everything out of an Eatwell Farm CSA box to make a stir-fry. We watched a short film from The Lexicon of Sustainability and PBS Food highlighting the benefits of the CSA model. Then, we got to chopping! Two items in the box were not typical ingredients in a Chinese stir-fry: lemons and grapefruits. Never mind, it turns out lemon zest brightens the flavors of anything you’re cooking and freshly squeezed grapefruit juice makes a delicious marinade for tofu when paired with soy sauce and sesame oil.

We truly had a great time. Special thanks to our tireless parent volunteers Ms. Rikke and Ms. Catherine, and to Ms. Aurelie for taking beautiful photos of class in action.

We hope to partner with Eatwell Farm for an event in the spring. Stay tuned!

Breakfast Around the World Week 4: Nigeria

This week we worked with an ingredient, plantains, that very few of us had cooked with before. Students found the firm, underripe plantains (perfect for the cooking method our omelette recipe required) difficult to peel, but fun to slice and fry in avocado oil. Other ingredients in our omelette included caramelized red onion, tomato, sugar snap peas, and spinach.

We discussed the fact that Nigeria is one of the most populous countries in the world; that because of the legacy of British colonization, English is the official language; and that regardless more than 500 languages are spoken there.

Our burners and lack of ovens didn’t allow us to fully cook the omelettes in one piece, so we ended up making a scramble, which was just as delicious. Students compared the savory flavor of the cooked plantain to roasted potatoes and another rare ingredient, breadfruit!

Rock and Rollers: Week 2A

Our after-school program is back in action! This week we made kati rolls filled with a spiced vegetable medley and a green chutney featuring mint from the Harvey Milk school garden. We had fun working with an unusual and exotic ingredient, fresh coconut, which we opened by banging the fruit against the concrete wall of the school kitchen outside!

Many kids drew parallels between the Mexican burritos we made last week and the Indian kati rolls. Pico de gallo and the green chutney both use cilantro and add a brightness to the savory flavor of beans or potatoes, and tortillas look a lot like the Indian flatbread called rotis, which we had made for us by our friends at local Castro restaurant Kasa.

The many spices we used for the filling made for a fragrant afternoon, and our kindergartners especially enjoyed listening to the Bangalore-based rock band Agam while we ate.

2nd Grade Edible Social Studies: Week 2

We started class by reviewing the concepts from last week around eating locally: it uses less energy and is better for the environment, supports local farmers, preserves nature, and tastes delicious. This week, we discussed how eating locally also usually means we’re eating with the seasons. The second graders passed around a calendar of when specific fruits and vegetables are in season in San Francisco and The Local Foods Wheel, a beautiful educational tool produced through a collaboration between a local artist, a local chef, and a local food systems expert. We asked the students to locate their birth month and see what’s in season at that time of year!

One of the seasonal foods to look forward to during the California winter is citrus. For our Winter Citrus Extravaganza, the students worked with Minneola tangelos, Meyer lemons, Moro blood oranges, Tahitian Sarawak pomelos, Shasta Gold mandarins, Satsuma mandarins, Cara Cara navel oranges, limes, and Ruby Red grapefruit. They peeled and thinly sliced the fruit into half moons, then made a salad dressing using red wine vinegar, mustard, honey, lime zest and juice, extra-virgin olive oil, and fresh tarragon and mint.

The coolest part of class was hearing some students recognize the same citrus varieties they had purchased on their field trip earlier this year to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. We love being a part of connecting learning in the classroom, on field trips, and in the kitchen.

Breakfast Around the World Week 3: Costa Rica

We landed in Central America this week and prepared a classic breakfast from Costa Rico called gallo pinto, which literally translates to “spotted rooster” and refers to the speckled appearance of dark beans cooked with rice. On our world map, we noticed how Costa Rica borders Nicaragua, where our beloved janitor Suzette was born, and that Nicaragua borders Honduras, where our friendly morning crossing guard, Matilde, is originally from. All of these countries share Spanish as a language, as well as one of our students’ favorite foods, tortillas!

First, we reviewed the basic components of cooking rice: use 1 part rice to 1 3/4 parts water, bring it to a boil, cover and reduce heat, set a 20-minute timer, and voila! For the gallo pinto, students added an aromatic mixture of onions, garlic, and red bell peppers, and then black beans once the rice was done. We ate our breakfast atop warmed tortillas from La Palma Mexicatessen in the Mission with a healthy sprinkling of cilantro (check out those knife skills below!) and last but not least, homemade Salsa Lizano, a popular condiment from Costa Rica. Our recipe included ancho chilis, lemon, carrots, cumin, and molasses and provided a wonderful sweet-tart-smoky element to the dish.