It seems odd that in a food column at Bowdoin, I have yet to mention Bowdoin dining, the best college food in the country, as rated by Princeton Review ©. We eat the best college dining food in the country daily, and it’s high time we get some tips from the pros. Moulton offers cooking classes for seniors to teach them the basics so they can cook healthy meals on a budget, when it’s more complicated than just swiping your Onecard.
As a part of Bowdoin’s effort to use local foods, especially as the weather gets warmer, Bowdoin Dining offered a cooking class for students. The class was taught by Archie, one of the lead chefs at Moulton, who showed the group of about 10 students how to chop, sauté, blend, and appreciate the food we made for dinner. On the menu was:
- Spinach, Feta & Maine Tomato Salad with Maine Maple Vinaigrette
- Sautéed Cajun Gulf of Maine Haddock
- Roasted Maine Root Vegetables
- Steamed Asparagus (bamboo steamer baskets)
- Creamy Polenta
Archie explained the importance of eating fresh and local foods whenever possible for environmental , health, and taste reasons. While we chopped asparagus and mixed the maple vinaigrette, he gave anecdotes of tours of Parmesan factories and small fishing villages in Italy. He explained that he tries to bring in Italian influences into the Moulton kitchen and taught various techniques of how to tell when meat, fish and vegetables are fresh and at their best.
With ten people in the kitchen, it did not take long to make dinner, especially considering the main dish was sautéed fish, which takes about 10 minutes to cook. All the prepping and cooking only took about an hour. After the food was plated, we sat down to enjoy our locally grown, student-prepared meal in the dining room at Ladd house. It was interesting to go behind the scenes and see how our dining hall food is prepared, it made me love Bowdoin dining all over again.