Rice Salad with Roast Persimmons

This salad got a good review

When I started thinking about this entire week of celebrating persimmons I wasn't really sure what I could make besides salads and cake so I did a little research and came across roast persimmons.  Wow they are a revelation!  I am still figuring out exactly what can be done with a roast persimmon but the few times we have used them they are really wonderful.  This rice salad used about -

4 cups Cooked Rice
1 Roast Delicata Squash
2 Roast Persimmons
1 lb. Roast Baby Carrots

Students helped me to peel and cut the squash into batons that we tossed in olive oil and salt and then roasted until they were soft and a little browned.  The Persimmons were peeled and cut into quarters also tossed in olive oil and salt and then roasted until they were soft and a little browned, the carrots got the same treatment. The cooking class cut all the roast vegetables into small pieces and we mixed it all together.  I added a little salt and olive oil but really the roast vegetables had plenty of flavor.

Quantities are hard to remember - I think I used 4 cups of uncooked rice, 5 lbs. of carrots, about 6 squash and maybe 6 persimmons.  We also added a few handfuls of roast broccoli but I don't think that it was really necessary.  

We did not make this at school

I got so excited about roast persimmons that we made a tart with a lemon/orange curd and roast persimmons

Green Salad with Persimmons

Drying the spinach was actually way too much fun

We made two green salads in our week of cooking persimmons.  I started the week with a 3 pound bag of baby spinach and 1 1/2 pounds of romaine hearts and it was all used by the time we were done.

The #1 Salad (Pretty Conventional)
Baby Spinach
Persimmons
Jicama
Fennel

With a Rice Wine Vinegar, Soy Sauce, Sesame Oil Dressing


The #2 Salad (Not so Conventional but very good)
Baby Spinach
Romaine Lettuce
Persimmons
Oranges
Apples

The dressing was Blended Hachiya Persimmons, Yogurt, Lime Juice, Soy Sauce, Sesame Oil

Winter Fruit Salad and Salsa with Persimmons

Winter fruit can make a great fruit salad.  For this remarkably good fruit salad that was made by fifth grade classes  we used -



Fuyu Persimmons
Oranges
Tangerines
Apples
Pomegranate Seeds
Mint
Lime Juice

Chopping Fruits and Vegetables for Salsa

In one of the fourth grade classes we made persimmon salsa with these basic ingredients

Fuyu Persimmons
Jicama
Cilantro
Oranges
Lime

We divided the class up into five different groups, each group made a slight variation.  One group substituted lemon juice for lime, another group added a pepper, another group added green tomato, one group got a little hot sauce.  There were some allergies to citrus and jicama so one group had no citrus and another had no jicama.  A hot pepper would have been a nice addition but I don't let students handle hot peppers.  When all the salsas were done the students had some time to sample each one and decide which they liked best.  I highly recommend this salsa especially now when the local tomatoes aren't very good. 

Persimmons

Persimmon Still Life by 5th grade student

All week long we cooked with persimmons.  I love these fruits not only for how delicious and versatile they are but also because the trees are gorgeous. Persimmon trees with stark black branches and brilliant orange red fruit or full of yellow leaves and the same bright fruit are just breathtaking.  They grow well and produce lots of fruit - in fact we have one in the yard at Peralta.  So here is a week of celebrating, cooking and eating persimmons.  First of all cake.  This is the first year that I have found a dependable and delicious recipe for Persimmon Cake.  I used this recipe from allrecipes with a few modifications.  We used a 12" x 9" pan and used from 2/3 to 1/2 cup of sugar and also did not use walnuts, raisins or the glaze.  We added orange rind to this recipe and also we tried it with a grated apple.  We made a few batches that were gluten free using about 1 3/4 cups GF flour. 

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/persimmon-bars/

Kindergarten Students Making Persimmon Cake

Persimmon Cabbage Slaw

Fourth Grade Persimmon Cabbage Slaw

Cabbage - I do love it and it is plentiful and inexpensive but I never find it easy to make kids enjoy it.  One fairly dependable recipe is a salad with a rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and sesame oil dressing; we added persimmons for extra color and additional sweetness.  I liked it and I am guessing the students who had four servings of this salad and complained that there was not enough also liked it.

We used -

Red Cabbage

Celery

Grated Carrots

Rice Wine Vinegar, Soy Sauce & Sesame Oil Dressing

Grating Carrots

Shiso

Green and Red Shiso in the Garden

In the summer I planted two shiso plants in the garden, one red and one green and a few sorrel plants.  Both the shiso and sorrel have done really well and I have a two giant leafy, delicious, fragrant  shiso plants and a few prolific sorrel plants which look just like spinach.  In Japan we used to enjoy red shiso ice cream and some people like to make shiso mojitos.  At home I use it often in cooked rice, salads or salsas but it is a unique and strong flavor that I didn't think students would enjoy.  Sorrel is wonderfully tart and I was pretty sure that it would be popular but I wasn't certain of the best way to use it in a class.  I thought that we should try to eat anything that is growing in the garden and that I like so well so we made a rice salad with garden herbs peas and carrots which was remarkably good.  Shiso is really nice with rice - at first we put a little in the salad but then added a lot when we realized how wonderful it was. I cooked about 7 cups of long grain rice - that is about 5 quarts of rice - It was all eaten with enthusiasm. 

To make a smaller amount try -

4 Cups Cooked Rice 
2 Carrots cut into small dice
1 Cup Cooked Frozen Peas
A handful of juliened Shiso 
A handful of juliened Sorrel
A handful of juliened Mint
I used a dressing of Rice Wine, Sesame Oil, Soy Sauce Dressing

This was an informative sight about shiso
http://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/how-to-use-shiso-leaves

Roasted Cauliflower and Pumpkin Butter

Red hair and Purple Cauliflower

Pican Restaurant in Oakland gave us a very generoius donation of Cauliflower - 3 different kinds, White, Purple and Romanesco.  We used some of it for a Mexican vegetable pickle and the rest we roasted.  The roasted cauliflower was inhaled by the kids as well as staff.  Here is the basic recipe, we added Parmesan Cheese.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Roasted-Cauliflower-238089

Could that be peanut butter and jelly on bagels?  Not likely, it is cranberry sauce and pumpkin butter.  All the pumpkin butter recipes online start with canned pumpkin, which misses all the fun of tasting a squash or pumpkin that you never had before so I will try to recreate it. The pumpkin butter recipe is -

Cook roasted pumpkin or squash in a pot on the stove with your choice of sweetner such as brown sugar, honey, mollasses, apple juice or a mixture of all of them.  Add spices like cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove or allspice to taste.  Cook at low heat, stirring frequently until it is as thick as you like.  Watery squash takes longer, dry pumpkin such as Kaboucha might need extra liquid.  This can also be cooked in the oven.

November PPTG Dinner

Can you imagine 40 kids cooking dinner for 60 people in 3 hours - it could be a basis for a cooking show or better yet 'Restaurant impossible' or a completely new show 'Chef's Nightmares'.  Every month the after school cooking class puts together an amazing dinner for the Parent Teacher Group Meeting.  This month was sponsored by a donation from the Safeway Foundation.  

MS Cassie getting dinner

The Menu was -

Choucroute Garni

Sauerkraut, Cabbage, Onions, Apples, Sausage, Pork Trotters, Pork Shanks, Smoked Neck Bones 

Vegetarian Cassoulet

White Beans, Roast Tomatoes, Onions, Leeks, Anise, Celery, Carrots, Mushrooms, Peas, Garlic Cracker Crumbs and Parmesan Cheese on top

Chicken Hot Dogs

Roast Potatoes

Kale Salad

Kale, Lemon Juice, Vinegar, Olive Oil, Salt

Green Salad

Lettuce, Cheese, Apples, Celery, Jicama

Apple, Pear and Pumpkin Bread Pudding

Bread, Eggs, Milk, Cream, Yogurt, Apples, Pears, Pumpkin Sugar, Spices

The cassoulet was remarkably good - it is pointless to try to explain how we made it, cooking this much food with so many students is not at all precise. I really could not tell you exactly how many onions or carrots we used or the spices that a student added but this is the recipe that I based it on.  We added roast tomatoes, sauted mushrooms, peas and anise and also cooked it in the oven for awhile, maybe 45 minutes but other wise it is pretty similar.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Vegetarian-Cassoulet-241753

The Coucoute Garni or Lots of Pork with Sauerkraut

The 2012 Pumpkin Party

It is that pumpkin time of the year, the stores and markets are full of all these interesting varieties and everyone in the neighborhood has one on their steps or front porches.  The annual Peralta Pumpkin Party has begun and was celebrated with lots of excitement and fun.  It starts off every year with trying to draw and paint all these amazing objects, after trying our best to get them down on paper then it is time to see if we can cook them into delicious dishes.  Why pumpkins?  They are nutritious, delicious and currently in season.  

Watercolor painting a Kaboucha Squash in the third grade

The Peralta Pumpkin Patch,  every student gets a pumpkin

Roasted squashes
These are roasted Sugar Pie Pumpkin, Butternut Squash, Kaboucha Squash and Marina di Chiogga.  To learn more about the Marina di Chiogga go to this link - http://rareseeds.com/marina-di-chioggia-squash.htm

To roast squash or pumpkins in the oven cut them in half and scoop out the seeds and mush, rub them all over with oil and then roast in a 350 degree oven until they are soft, it can take a while depending on the size of the squash 30 to 90 minutes.

Pumpkin Cake 

Pumpkin Cake made by Kindergarten
 

For the last few years I have been trying to make a dependable and easy pumpkin cake that doesn't use too many eggs.  This recipe seems about right, we made several batches of it and everyone seemed to like it.  It smells great when it is cooking, the classrooms at school were filled with this wonderful aroma.  Warm cake right out of the oven is typically delicious but I noticed that the leftovers were still being eaten by the teachers the next day so it was at least decent.

Pumpkin Cake

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon ginger

½ - 2/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

½ cup vegetable oil

11/2 cups roasted mashed pumpkin            

Bake at 350 for about 20 - 25 minutes until done.  

At school I baked these in a convection oven so a conventional oven might be a different amount of time.  If you make this at home you might want to put the roasted pumpkin in a food processor, at school I gave the students a fork and told them to mash it really well and if they had enough time it was very smooth.

In the kindergarten classes we added 1 or 2 grated apples which I thought made the cake better.  

We also made these with gluten free flour and also made one batch that was gluten free and egg free, using egg substitute and water instead of eggs

Second grade writing in their science journals about making pumpkin cake

After School Cooking Class on Halloween

Making cheese fingers on Halloween

Cheese fingers and bloody squash guts

What Pumpkin Makes the Best Pie?

The Contenders

Every year we try different pumpkins and squashes in a pumpkin pie bar to see which one makes the best pie.  This year we compared Marina di Chiogga, Sugar Pie and Kaboucha.

Two years in a row the winner has been Kaboucha Squash, closely followed by Marinna di Chiogga and then not too far behind was Sugar Pie.  They are all good choices but according to these fourth graders Kaboucha is the best.

Charting the Winner

The recipe that we used was from Cooks.com.  We made a few changes by using all oats to make it gluten free and using less crust and finally substituting half and half for evaporated milk and possibly adding some extra pumpkin but this recipe is dependable enough to modify a bit.  http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1937,159169-248206,00.html

Spaghetti Squash Salad with a first grade class

1st graders making Spaghetti Squash Salad

I may never eat pasta again - spaghetti squash has one fifth the calories and is delicious. We made a salad with it in the after school cooking class as well as one of the first grade classes. I had two spaghetti squash, generously donated by Pican Restaurant in Oakland, which I cut in half and scooped out the seeds which we roasted.  I steamed the squash with the peel on until it was tender.   Cooking with kids is not a very precise or controlled activity and the amount we made was enough for the entire class so I can't exactly remember the amounts of anything that we used therefore these are estimates - you should make this to your taste.

1 spaghetti squash steamed and cooled

2 cups chopped tomatoes

1 chopped English cucumber

1 handful of chopped basil

1 handful of chopped mint

grated Parmesan cheese - about 1 cup

salt to taste 

olive oil

Mix it all up, you could add other vegetables or other herbs, recipes that I saw online used feta cheese, capers, lemon juice or peppers.  

Spaghetti Squash has about 40 calories in 1 cup compared to about 200 calories for a cup of pasta.

Making Pumpkin Butter in a Third Grade Class

Fattoush

The days are getting shorter, it rained on and off all week and all of the sudden the light has changed. This week the younger students K-2 made Fattoush - a vegetable salad with stale pita bread.  We used pita chips, cucumbers, roast zucchini, tomatoes, roast peppers, olives, fresh mozzarella and feta cheese.  You can use any combination of fresh and roasted vegetables in this salad, I like to use eggplant in this salad but thought that it would not be popular with the kids.  I have added a link for a recipe from King Arthur Flour in case you want to see a recipe
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/fattoush-recipe

A Persimmon Tree 

I am always sad when summer peaches are absolutely and completely gone but they are replaced by other wonderful fruits like pomegranates and persimmons.  The older students made a green salad with pomegranate seeds, pumpkin seeds, persimmons, oranges and avocados with a balsamic vinegar dressing.  I think that about 20 kids might have eaten three pounds of lettuce so either the salad tasted good or they were ravenous or possibly both.

Kale, Onions, Celery and Collards growing in the Peralta Gardens

We used lettuce and greens from the garden for the salads 

Salad with Cheddar and Apples

I teach the older kids cooking from 4:15 PM until 5:00 PM.  That late in the afternoon they are so hungry that just about anything tastes good to them but this salad actually was delicious and they ate a lot of it.  These are the ingredients that we used; you can mix them together in the quantities that you like.

Lettuce

Grated Cheddar Cheese

Thinly Sliced Apples

Chopped Celery

Jicama Slices

We used a dressing with lemon juice, lemon peel, rice wine vinegar and olive oil, salt and honey.

Pasta Salad with Greens

Working with children, recipes are similar to the Pirates Code - that is they are guidelines so to speak.  So I will explain the ingredients and how we handled them but quantities are vague.  Also at home most people are not making enough to feed 20 plus kids at 5:00 PM.  If I did give quantities it might be an amount like as much grated cheese as 4 kids can make in 5 minutes.

This salad was really popular with the kids - they actually seem to love any pasta salad but this one was exceptionally tasty. It included -

Cooked Pasta

Cooked Chopped Greens (we used a combination of Swiss chard, collards and red kale from the gardens)

Grated Parmesan Cheese

Lemon Juice
Salt
Garlic

Olive Oil

Tomatoes

Cooked Peas