Students discover the joys of cooking

Caltech offers students a variety of courses such as organic chemistry and combustion fundamentals, but for many, their experience with baking, broiling, and braising is limited. A cooking course offered this term may get students as comfortable in the kitchen as they are in the laboratory.
Standing one evening at tables with an assortment of liquids, bowls of powders, and gleaming implements arrayed before them, groups of Caltech undergraduates set about making biscuits.

In the living room, the dough that one team had just mixed came out fluffy and plump. But rolled out too flat with a rolling pin, the team members were told, the biscuits would bake quickly and harden. No problem, said Kyle Bradley, a senior in geology: why not just stack them, one on top of another?

In the kitchen, Team Dogbone, so called because of the bone-shaped biscuits they had popped into the oven earlier, had moved on to the apple fritter mix. Perhaps it was all that applesauce that made the batter turn out runny and thin. Flour was called for to thicken the mix.

The eight-week course takes place at the home of Tom Mannion, assistant vice president for campus life, and introduces students to kitchen skills and cooking principles. Students learn to use kitchen tools, develop a sense for seasonings, cook vegetables, grains, and legumes, make salads, and choose desserts.

“We truly try to provide a comprehensive, yet concise, overview of all the different types of foods,” Mannion said.

The menu that night focused on Southern cooking, with the meal consisting of a green-bean casserole as the main dish, with baked cheese grits and biscuits with gravy on the side. Corn bread, apple fritters, and yams rounded out the meal.

This is the first time a vegetarian course has been offered, said cooking student Galen Loram, a senior in economics and a vegetarian for the last 12 years.

“I don’t cook,” he said. “I burn two out of every three frozen pizzas I make.” He predicted that the class would greatly affect his diet.

Acting as instructor, coach, and culinary counselor, Mannion went from table to table, peppering his cooking instructions with kitchen tips.

On cast-iron skillets: “Your skillet should be seasoned with oil before you cook with it,” he said. “And you never wash it with soap—only use water and a scouring pad.”

On preparing greens: “If you’re cooking greens, they need to boil for a long time. Get them started first before you prepare your other dishes.”

Mannion and six assistants, graduates of earlier classes, led the students on their culinary travels. Wearing smocks and dark striped pants, the helpers dashed in and out of the kitchen.

“This gives people a chance to see what it takes to cook something, because many of them may not have had the chance,” said Tim Boyd, a junior studying electrical and computer engineering. Working as an assistant, he helped keep track of the food in the oven and rescued the fledgling cooks’ creations.

By nine o’clock, Mannion began pulling the skillets out of the oven and placing them on the dining table. The students would sit down to a meal they made themselves, many of them tasting grits, okra, and greens for the first time.

“We want to show them that it can be fun and easy,” Boyd said, referring to the class and campus events at which he prepares food. “It’s a job, but I do it for the fun,” he said. “It’s the best of both worlds.”

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