Global Cuisine on The Hilltop

By Jamie Reynolds, Director of Communications

Berwick’s mission to promote virtue and useful knowledge among the rising generations is present in all aspects of the learning experience. From the traditional classroom setting to the athletic field and theater stage, students are learning in a way that prepares them for their future beyond the Hilltop. One spot on campus, the Katz Test Kitchen in the Walsh Wellness Center at Oakes House, is consistently providing an essential life skill to all students.

Over the last two years, the School has hosted five Global Cooking classes and a summer cooking camp open to the entire community. Jufen Rui, who is also an Upper School Mandarin teacher, believes that learning to cook is an important step toward independence.

“I enjoy cooking,” Rui says, “but more so enjoy teaching young people how to be more independent in their lives in the future.”

Even during the pandemic, when the stovetops remained cool and the dishware sat untouched on shelves, the Global

Cooking class met in the “Zoom Kitchen.” In the first class, which focused on making sushi, Remi Young ’23 remembers learning how to choose the right rice, how to cook it, and how to wrap sushi and cut them into beautiful shapes. He grasped the art of making sushi so well that he went to work in a Japanese restaurant to sharpen his skills, became a sushi master, and served as a sushi judge for another Global Cooking class.

Rui and Julie Alexander, who chairs the World Languages and Cultures Department, recently taught a lesson about Thai curry chicken. Students learned everything from how to properly secure their hair before preparing food to how to cut vegetables into appropriate sizes so they’d cook evenly to calculating the proper ratios of herbs and spices. The end result was a thick, fragrant, delicious curry.

In January, second grade students learned how to make dumplings in the Test Kitchen with Rui. As part of their culture and identity project work, students learned about foods from around the world. Their work in the Test Kitchen brought their studies to life as they chopped vegetables, cracked eggs, and tenderized meat. Each student was able to choose the ingredients they wanted to include and brought home four dumplings to showcase their newly acquired skills.

The Global Cooking class looks to expand during the spring trimester to include a Peruvian cooking class taught by Upper School English teacher Tim Protzmann.