Cooking Week 5

Cooking Investigation: Week of October 22^nd, 2012

This was a very exciting week for us.  We had the opportunity to explore a pasta maker and make our own homemade pasta!  The children have been talking about making pasta for some time now.  Ms. Camardese would ask the children, “What are you making?” and the response was often “pasta”.  For the first few days we explored with the pasta maker.  The children seemed very interested in exploring how this device worked.  They tried turning the crank, feeding materials through the rollers and adjusting the dials.  Each child wanted a turn to “make it go round and round”.  To help the children understand this was a tool for cooking, we watched videos on our Ipad to see how other chefs used this tool. 

  

After a few days of rolling play dough through the rollers (do not worry it was washed thoroughly before using) we made pasta dough and attempted out first batch of homemade pasta.  Ms. Camardese has made pasta before but she called on the expertise of her grandma to assist with the pasta making.  The children were very excited for “making pasta with grandma”.  As group we made the dough, using flour and eggs.  Ella was very excited to try to crack the eggs.  After the dough was done we let it set for a period of time, then it was time to make pasta.  We took the pasta maker to the big kitchen, set up our work space and began rolling.  The children assisted with the rolling and even attempted cutting the dough with plastic knives.  During the whole event the children kept asking, “Now we eat it?”  When our exploration was done, Grandma finished up the batch of pasta and Ms. Camardese boiled it.  The children were lucky enough to have homemade pasta for snack.  To say it was a hit was an understatement.  The children were ecstatic to try the pasta, something they worked so hard to make with their own two hands.  

Next week we plan to revisit this event, talking about the pasta making experience and planning for future recipes.  The pasta seemed to be a big hit; we may work on adding a different course to our menu.  Some of the children have discussed making salads, others have discussed making desserts.  We will continue to search for some healthy dishes to test out in our classroom!