At a Student Cooking Contest, Confidence Is the Main Ingredient
July 29, 2018
By: Debbie Truong
Source: The Washington Post
Anne Smith peered into the grocery bag one recent day, befuddled when she spied the ground pork, zucchini, microgreens and bananas. The ingredients had been thrust upon her and her classmates, sending them into a day-long frenzy as they devised a menu for a school-wide cooking contest.
After a day of preparation, a three-course meal materialized: a salad with fresh mozzarella and tomato, a halved zucchini stuffed with turkey accompanied by cilantro jasmine rice, and for dessert, caramelized bananas topped with shortbread crumble.
A three-judge panel would decide if the meal warranted Smith’s class advancing to the final round of the cooking competition unfolding this summer at the private Phillips School in Annandale, Va., a special-education day school for students 6 to 22 years old.