One of the great things about cooking club is that it teaches students to cook new foods — and to prepare familiar foods in new ways. Our Week 6 class did both of those things. The familiar foods were lettuce and ground turkey, which we combined into Chinese-style lettuce wraps. The new food was edamame beans, which we added to a corn side dish to give it new flavor.

The meal had a lot of strong smells and tastes, with such ingredients as soy sauce, cider vinegar, fresh ginger, garlic, cilantro and green onions. And that gave our young chefs a chance to compare new foods with ones they knew.

“This smells like garlic bread,” Omari Upshur observed as the turkey and corn dishes simmered on our hot plate. “I love garlic bread!” Milton Sanders exclaimed.

There were no big chopping tasks for this meal, but several smaller ones that built skills. Jayden Jimenez, who joined the class just this week, quickly picked up safe chopping techniques by dicing the fresh garlic, chopping the cilantro, while making sure to keep his guiding hand on top of the knife. Omari was surprised that the green onions had a strong onion-y smell, even though they looked nothing like regular onions. Jairo Hernandez got a new experience peeling the fresh ginger, and a surprise when he tasted it raw. “It was really spicy!” he declared.

Our chefs always like assembling meals, and this week was no exception. When the lettuce “cups” were laid out on a platter for the wraps, they quickly chose which ones they wanted for themselves. And they liked the challenge of rolling the lettuce after filling the cups with turkey.

The turkey was a hit. “I loved it,” Jayden said. “I had two servings,” Omari added and Milton did too. “I liked the spices,” Milton said. He was not as happy with his assignment mixing of the raw turkey with soy sauce.

“When you made me do that meat with my hands, it was nasty!” he said with a smile. “I wanted to use my hands, but it still felt nasty.”

The popularity of the turkey was more than matched by the grades given the corn and edamame.

“What I liked most was the corn,” Jairo said. “I got three servings.”

“I had four!” Omari added.

And how did Jayden feel about his first cooking class?

“It was so fun,” he said. “I liked learning how to chop up stuff. I wish my mom could see this.”