A good risotto gets an A in this class

Port Washington High School students are learning the importance of having all their ingredients and utensils organized and ready to go, although they use the French culinary term mise en place for that.

They cook their risotto al dente, as it should be, and have learned how to make everything from Alfredo sauce and rice pilaf to scones and focaccia.

And their knife skills are coming along.

These are students — freshmen through seniors — enrolled in the school’s fundamentals of cooking and fundamentals of baking classes, part of  the Port Washington-Saukville School District’s new Family and Consumer Sciences program.

Think of it as a reboot of home economics, a program the district shed years ago because it was thought there was neither the time nor the need to teach high school students skills like cooking.

That thinking has changed, but Family and Consumer Sciences is not your parents’ home ec. Its cooking classes are designed not only to teach students a fundamental life skill but also prepare them for careers in the culinary and hospitality industries.

“This is about creating pathways for our students, about career planning and about being work ready and life ready,” Supt. Michael McMahon said. “Hospitality and culinary skills are in need in our area, so we decided to offer this program, and holy cow did our kids respond. The classes are full and we’re turning kids away.”

McMahon, a former Grafton School District administrator, saw the value of Family and Consumer Sciences in that school district, which has an established program.

“I was surprised when I arrived here that a program like this didn’t exist,” he said.

The district worked quickly to establish the program and benefited from finding the resources and the expertise to start it this school year.

A $145,000 grant from the Random Lake-based Bruce Krier Charitable Foundation was used to convert a science lab into a kitchen. It’s not exactly a professional kitchen, but it’s close.

There are seven culinary work stations, each with a stove. The countertops are stainless steel and there is a commercial-grade, reach-in cooler. The kitchen features resturant-grade Viking products and Kitchen-Aid mixers.  

Then the district found the right person to teach the class — Jeff Mallegni, whose students call him Chef Jeff for a reason.

Mallegni has 20 years of professional cooking experience that includes working in fine-dining restaurants in Milwaukee and Elkhart Lake, serving as chef and food service director for the Kohler School District and, most recently, working as a nutrition program consultant and farm-to-school specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

But while Mallegni is a culinary pro, he came to the district with relatively little teaching experience. He has taught adult classes and served as a substitute teacher in the Kohler School District during the pandemic. So the Port-Saukville School District paired him with mentor Brenda Stielow, a retired veteran of the Grafton School District’s Family and Consumer Sciences program.

“My specialty is on the cooking side of things, so Brenda is helping me with the baking class and developing the curriculum for both classes,” he said.

Mallegni started the school year by introducing students to the basics.

“We started with knife skills and have been working on vocabulary, which is really important in the kitchen,” he said.

The class, however, is about far more than learning how to cook a scrambled egg, although cooking eggs five ways was one of the lessons.

The class has worked its way through the soups, stocks and sauces unit and moved on to grains, rice and pasta. Last week students made sofrito for a beans and rice dish.

The cooking and baking classes, Mallegni said, are designed to prepare students for careers, and for that reason they are a good fit at Port High.

“The emphasis is on career preparation and Port is a tourist community with a lot of good restaurants,” he said. “Some of my students already have restaurant experience.”

That said, the majority of his students are primarily interested in just learning how to cook, Mallegni said.

“I’d say about 15% to 20% of them are interested in careers in hospitality,” he said.

“I’ve got kids who have been cooking for a while and work in restaurants and some who I don’t think have ever been in a kitchen.”

Regardless of their experience in the kitchen, the vast majority of his students are genuinely interested in learning how to cook and bake, Mallegni said.

“One kid who is taking both classes came up to me and said, ‘Chef, I’m learning way more than I thought I would. So for risotto, do you have to cook it al dente?’” he said.

Mallegni’s students are also pushing him to add recipes to the class.

“They all want to make sourdough,” he said. “I told them that then we would have to make a starter and I’d have to take it home over the summer to feed it, and they were like, ‘What do you mean, feed it?’”

Mallegni plans to add an advanced food preparation and restaurant management class to the program next school year to explore more complex cooking lessons and introduce management concepts such as inventory and scheduling for students who are interested in culinary careers.

And given his background, he is thinking about ways to incorporate farm-to-school concepts in his classes. Already he has had discussions with science teachers who run hydroponic and aquaponic labs at the high school about growing food for the culinary program.

“Fresh herbs would be an option for sure,” Mallegni said. “Definitely basil.

“I’m an avid hunter and I raise chickens, so I’d like to get into meat processing as well. I’d like to incorporate more of that farm-to-school aspect in the curriculum.”

He has already exposed his students to some of those lessons. While teaching them how to cook eggs five ways, Mallegni cracked an egg from one of his chickens in a bowl and one from a commercially raised chicken in another and asked his students to compare them.

“They asked, ‘Why are the yokes so different?’” he said. “I’ve been trying to expose them to things like that because it’s important to know where your food comes from and how it’s made.”

Mallegni calls his cooking class “a work in progress” with plenty of room for growth and said he has been encouraged by the response from students.

“I’ve got a lot of kids who are really locked in and engaged,” he said. “Ninety-five percent of my students are doing really, really well.”