When it comes to cooking, enthusiasm takes you a long way toward success. That may be why the Bayard fall cooking class has been so successful. Consider Jairo Hernandez at the start of Week 4. When he learned we would be making Salmon Cakes and Sweet Potato Fries, he clapped his hands and exclaimed: “Fish and fries! Let’s go!”

That kind of enthusiasm is contagious — and when one member of our all-boys team gets excited, the others do, too.

Everyone was eager to take on the Week 4 recipes, which required a lot of chopping, some careful mixing and watchful baking so that the salmon or fries didn’t overcook.

Omari Upshur led the way, taking on the week’s toughest assignment chopping the rock-hard sweet potatoes into fry shapes. He cut them into halves to provide a flat bottom that wouldn’t wobble, and then used our sharpest knife to slice them lengthwise. John Negron, who joined Omari cutting the potatoes, was surprised at how hard a task it was.

“I had to put a lot of pressure on them, which made me very tired,” he said.

Once the potatoes were ready, John, Omari and Jairo divided up the onion, celery and red peppers needed to make the Salmon Cakes and learned the best approach for “dicing” them into squares.

Then it was time to bring the salmon into the mix, and Jairo got his first lesson using a hand-powered can opener. When the top came off the can, Omari was surprised at how “fishy” it smelled. “Whoa!” he exclaimed, backing off. He, Milton Sanders, John and Jairo were happy to discover that cooking the salmon with the vegetables made it sweet-smelling instead of strong — and much more appealing.

“It smells good,” Jairo observed as he stirred the salmon and vegetables in our sauté pan. “It didn’t smell good, but now it does. It smells like chicken.”

When the vegetable mix was ready, everyone took turns molding the mixture with their hands to make hamburger-shaped patties. Then they placed them in rows on a sheet pan to bake with the fries in the oven.

Cooking this recipe “was the best,” Jairo would say later, “because I came out of my comfort zone. I don’t like to touch stuff and I didn’t want to touch the salmon, but I grabbed it and smushed it and turned it into cakes.”

And how did the chefs rate the meal?

“The Salmon Cakes were good,” Omari said, and Jairo agreed.

“I liked the Salmon Cakes, too,” Milton said. “And the fries were good.”

Milton’s actions spoke even louder than his words, however. He liked the meal so much he ate two Salmon Cakes in class and took one home to his Dad.