Junior Chef

These little chefs are doing big things in the kitchen this fall.

Students at Cottle Elementary School in Tuckahoe are taking part in an afterschool cooking program in the school teacher’s lounge every Tuesday afternoon.  Children ages 5-12 take part in all essential steps of meal preparation; cutting, scooping, mixing, spreading and pouring to create delicious and nutritious afterschool snacks.

The Junior Chefs instructor, Karen Ramlakhan, has had previous success at the Teen Chefs program up the road at the Tuckahoe Middle/ High School. The award winning Teen Chef’s program, now in its second year,  has teens cooking, frying and slicing to create slightly more sophisticated meals from their junior counterparts at the elementary school.

The Junior Chef’s program immediately follows the Cottle Crew afterschool sports club held in the Cottle Elementary School gymnasium. The Cotte Crew practice sport specific skills like baseball, volleyball, soccer, kickball and more. The Cottle Crew walks down the hall to Junior Chefs after working up quite an appetite! “It really is a great combination of programing. You have the exercise and movement component with a healthy snack right afterwards. The best part is the kids themselves make their snack making it even more meaningful.” said program supervisor Jack Reisman.

The little chefs have a big menu planned this fall. Already they have made ants on a log and peanut butter snails (celery, peanut butter and raisins) and yogurt parfaits (low-fat yogurt, frosted flakes and honey.) The yogurt parfaits were an immense hit with these inspiring culinary artists, So much so that several did not want to eat their final product because they were so proud of their work. “NO!” piped one student, as he delicately wrapped his parfait in tin foil eyeing all staff members who stood close by. “I can not eat this now. I need to show my dad first!”

Other menu items coming up this fall include personal pizzas, quesadillas and fruit salad.

The goal of the Junior Chefs program is to teach children how to independently make nutritious after-school snacks all the while boosting confidence in their abilities. This program would not be possible without the ongoing hospitality of the William E. Cottle Elementary School. 

Teen Chef Program

South East had it's first ever "Teen Chef" program yesterday and it was a success! We made Garden Salad with Citrus Vinaigrette. In this program we want to keep it healthy and for the first class we decided to keep it easy. We worked on a couple of different skills.

First we chopped up all our vegetables including lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers. Each participant go their own cutting board, lettuce knife and salad bowl because we are working on independence in the kitchen.

After all the vegetables were cut up we worked on our vinaigrette. We squeezed our oranges, lemons and grapefruits by hand.

Then we carefully poured the juice into our vinaigrette bowls. After that we added the other ingredients including rice wine vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, salt and zest from our citrus.

Next we whisked all of our vinaigrette ingredients together and poured it all over our salad. The smell of citrus was all around us, yum!

Finally we grated our fresh asiago cheese to top off our salad along with seasoned croutons for a crunch. 

And last but certainly not least we got to taste a little of our hard work and the feedback was very good! The rest of the salad our teen chefs got to take home to enjoy with their families.