The meal we call Ratatouille gets its name from the French word meaning “to toss or stir.” In our seventh week of cooking class, our young chefs certainly got to do a lot of tossing and stirring — and they got to make their first dessert, too!

Ratatouille (RAT-uh-TOO-ee) is often made as a stew in a pot, but our recipe was a sheet pan dish in which the vegetables are roasted in the oven and then served over the grain quinoa. And what an array of vegetables! Zucchini, eggplant, onions, cherry tomatoes, garlic and red peppers, plus sweet-smelling herbs like thyme, oregano and fresh basil. With a mix of reds, purples, whites and greens, this was a colorful as well as healthful recipe, showing how meals can be as pleasing to look AND good to eat.

With all those vegetables, there was a lot of chopping to do, but not the kind our chefs had done before. The onion and zucchini needed to be thin sliced in rounds and the red peppers cut into strips. The eggplant had to be cut crosswise, and then chopped into one-inch cubes.

Steven Ortiz mastered that quickly and was the first to notice that the center cube of the round slices was square on all sides.

“I made the perfect cube!” he announced proudly after making his first. Then he announced every other perfect cube he achieved as he worked his way down the eggplant. “I made another!” he exclaimed after the second. “… And another… and another!”

While he was taking care of eggplant, Nisi Lipscomb — one of the “Garlic Guys” — was smashing and chopping the fresh garlic for the recipe, and guest chef Ivette Kelly Perez sliced two big red peppers lengthwise into strips.

Ivette, Steven and Nisi then teamed up to thin-slice the two small onions we needed and chop the cherry tomatoes in half.

Across the kitchen, Brenny Leon and Makaylee Del Valle were getting experience with another kind of cooking — baking biscuits for our dessert of Strawberry Shortcake.

There was a lot of measuring involved, because baking is a like a science project and each amount needs to be exact. They took turns measuring 1 1/2 cups of flour, 3/4 of a cup of milk, 6 tablespoons of butter, 4 teaspoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. They had fun mixing the dry ingredients together and adding the butter and milk to create a sticky, gooey dough.

As Brenny spooned the mixture into muffin tins for baking, Makaylee took charge of slicing the beautiful red strawberries that would be served over the biscuits with sweet vanilla yogurt.

When the biscuits went into the oven, Brenny and Makaylee rejoined their classmates to put the final touches on the Ratatouille. They had special fun stripping the leaves from the fresh thyme stems and tossing the herbs and vegetables with olive oil. When Ivette had trouble using two spoons for the tossing, we gave her a green light to “use your hands — they’re one of your best cooking tools!”

When the Ratatouille came out of the oven it made a really colorful dish spread over our big white platter, and the chefs marched it into the cafeteria.

And how was this two-part meal?

The Strawberry Shortcake was a hit, but the Ratatouille not so much. The class picked at the vegetables and only ate a little, though they felt lemon juice made it taste better. The biggest fan turned out to be Ivette’s third-grade sister Angelica, who smiled and declared “I like it!”

Everyone wanted more of the Strawberry Shortcake, with some asking to take some home.

Makaylee was proud that she had gotten to make the most popular dish.

When asked if the class had been fun, she smiled and gave a big Thumb’s Up.

Nisi declared that with the skills he has learned, “I could be in a fancy restaurant!”