Students Get Taste of Food Around World

Offering classmates a taste of cuisine from around the world, a group of vocational education students turned a courtyard at Monroe High School into an open-air restaurant on Wednesday for an innovative fund-raiser.

“I think it’s important to share the culture,” explained Fataneh Tabatabai, who teaches French at the North Hills campus. A native of Iran, Tabatabai helped out by serving koukou, a Persian eggplant dish.

“It’s not good for cholesterol,” she said, but that didn’t seem to bother the hungry and the curious who paid $1 for a serving.

Teacher Eleanor Schuster organized the event as a way of demonstrating the rich diversity of foods from countries outside the United States and to raise money for the school’s cash-strapped vocational program. Her 180 students were required to find authentic ethnic recipes and refine them during their math and English classes.

All the meals were prepared in the school’s kitchen over the last week at a cost of only $140. “I’m a good shopper,” Schuster quipped.

Biki Walia, 16, borrowed a recipe for India’s tandoori chicken from his grandmother and said he was surprised at the number of classmates who turned out to sample students’ creations.

“I didn’t expect so many,” he said between mouthfuls of Hungarian goulash. “I thought they were more the burger type.”

In fact, the hourlong event saw students and teachers alike lining up for more than two dozen dishes from countries such as Ireland, Japan, Poland, Russia, Lebanon, Korea, Denmark and Armenia.

Rosalinda Valdespino said she gave up a spot on the drill team to take Schuster’s class, figuring that the skills would better serve her in making a living. Cooking is an art with an infinite number of expressions, she noted, but it’s also an industry that can never go out of business.

“Who doesn’t eat?” she said. “Everybody eats.”