The members of Culinary House, who live together at HCA, will offer cooking demos, community dinners and more, all in an effort to inspire students' inner chefs and show how easy and satisfying good cooking can be.
The 11 members of Culinary House, located in the Haverford College Apartments, kicked off the year with a salsa making working shop and an ambitious agenda.
According to the Culinary House mission statement, the new group wants to“offer an outlet where once a week or once every other week students can gather and indulge in culinary bravado, whether it be a simple appetizer, a delectable desert, or a multi-course meal. We want to inspire the chef within each student, and we want to show the community how easy simple, proper cooking can be.”
“We started Culinary House to help encourage cooking on campus,” says Patrick Phelan ‘11. “We think the HCA kitchens are a highly unused resource, and we think cooking is one of the best life skills to have.“
Culinary House members plan on hosting occasional community dinners throughout the year, the first of which will take place several weeks after fall break. Guests will take part in the preparation of the three- to four-course meal so that they can immerse themselves in the culinary culture that the House seeks to create.
“I'm really excited about our first community dinner,” said Phelan.“We're going to open the event to the whole school, and everyone from the house will make at least one dish. I'm really excited to see what other people from the house make and what people from the community bring
As a corollary to these dinners Culinary House members want to combine efforts with John Francone and the Dining Center at some point. “Whether we set up a few stands in the Sunken Lounge or actually plan and cook an entire dinner one night, I think it's really important to spread the word and get people excited about what we're doing,” said Phelan.
The Culinary House group also hopes to revive the all but defunct HCA garden so that Haverford students can play an active role in not just the preparation and consumption of their food, but in growing it as well. In addition, the group plans to volunteer some time and resources to Philadelphia food drives and soup kitchens as a way of giving back to the community that goes beyond Haverford campus Finally, each member of Culinary House plans to teach at least one tutorial in a planned semi-weekly series of cooking classes. (A recent session focused on baking an apple pie.) Although the events are limited to roughly ten people, the house plans to start a blog at which non-attendees can access recipes to use in their own free time.
-Cameron Scherer
A longer version of this article appeared in the October 6 issue of The Bi-College News.
