The second group of students, all girls, from Eco Club decided on making jerk chicken and a rice and peas dish, after much deliberation. Once they saw the recipe, there was no question about what they wanted to make! We used the Stop’s cookbook, which was a favourite of all the Eco Clubs students when we perused piles of cookbooks earlier in the month. They had been hesitating between making jerk chicken with rice and peas, and also wanting to make coleslaw, cheddar biscuits, Broccoli Leek soup, Joshna’s Vegetable Chile, and about a dozen other recipes. I think they also liked the colourful photos that displayed the dishes tantalizingly!
We met up first period to get the marinade ready and so that the chicken would be able to soak up all the lovely spices and herbs.
This group of students, all girls, also made a salad and were keen to experiment when making the salad dressing. I taught them the basics of making a vinaigrette and they took it upon themselves to grate some fresh ginger – M.’s idea actually. We took turns trying out the dressing, dipping lettuce leaves and sweet pepper to taste, pretending to be food critics.
Garlic and dried thyme from the Winchester garden were incorporated into the recipe. Scotch bonnet pepper seeds were collected and planted under the grow lights in the teacher’s lounge while we waited for the chicken to cook in the oven.
The rice and peas, made with pigeon(!) peas was quite a hit. The coconut milk flavoured the dish amazingly, as did the subtle flavouring from the scotch bonnet pepper that steeped in the cooking pot with the rice mixture. The girls were pretty pleased and gobbled everything up. Again, we had to fight off students and teachers that wanted to pop in for a look and taste.
After eating and cleaning, a couple of the girls braved the outdoors and took out the food waste into the compost bin out in the garden.
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