K-M faculty, staff enjoy students’ food creations

Faculty and staff at Kasson-Mantorville High School had a chance to check out the food innovations of students as they enjoyed a lunch prepared by the Food Innovation Class.
The class, taught by Michele Lindquist, has the students developing new food products, recipes and testing and revising them until they reach their goal. As part of the class, the students prepare a meal of some of the items they have created and give the staff a chance to try them out.
The most recent lunch included a BBQ chicken quesadilla, a pasta salad and what students called a “brownie cookie.”
The idea, Lindquist said, is to develop recipes, try them out and then make changes and tweak them to get to the desired taste.
The pasta salad worked well the first time, students said, but the quesadilla and brownie cookie took a little more time. Students said the cookie brownie was “way too dry” on the first attempt but “seven tries later it works.”
The quesadilla, they said, took three or four tries to get it right, with some having peppers and some without.
The students work throughout the quarter on improving the dishes they have created, Lindquist said, evaluating each step in the process to improve the final recipes.
The food served to the staff this month were not the only recipes developed during the quarter.
Bevin Klampe said she was part of a group that created a buffalo chicken street taco. Changes were made after each evaluation until the final recipe was given the okay.
For Brandi Newell and her group, the recipe was veggie stir fry although it was with bacon, she said. Most of the stir fry was a variety of veggies, she said, including zucchini, potatoes, bell peppers and onions. At one point the potatoes were removed because they took longer to cook than the other vegetables, she said. But people really liked the potatoes, so they were added back in but cooked earlier than the other veggies, she said.
There were also changes made to the spices added. Cayenne pepper did not work and the recipe finally ended up with chili powder, paprika and garlic powder.
The Food Innovations class is part of the Family and Consumer Sciences program with classes taught by Lindquist and Janna Carroll-Boldt. Among the classes offered by K-M are Food Innovations, Food & Nutrition Fundamentals, Culinary Arts & Baking, Culinary Arts & Nutrition as well as Teen Decisions, Life Management, Housing & Design, Apparel Design & Textile and Hospitality and Tourism.
There are also two concurrent enrollment classes through Mankato State University including Child Development & Education and Human Development.