It’s quite a sight, watching nine young men and women diligently trying not to overload their paper-thin sheets of nori, dried seaweed. The scene provokes a mental musical moment: “If you knew sushi like I know sushi, oh, oh, oh, what a roll …”
And oh what a sight: six boys and three girls deep in concentration, making their own cucumber, avocado or tuna rolls, some more successfully than others, but determined to get it right.
They’re tackling a task that has frustrated many an adult. They are also part of a year-round cooking program sponsored by the city of Aurora.
Known as “Kitchen on the Green,” the recently remodeled $60,000 kitchen is alive daily with cooking classes of one kind or another.
Enthusiasts from 8 to 80 can register for classes that would cost two or three times as much at private cooking schools.
Last week it was a special class for children as young as 6 cooking meals from a different country every day. On another occasion, children from Buckley Air National Guard Base took up residence in the kitchen for a day.
Today’s class is working with ahi tuna, avocado, cucumber and those sheets of seaweed in which the rice, fish or vegetables will be rolled.
Instructor Gigia Kolouch has explained the difference between nigiri (bite-size morsels of rice topped with fish), temaki (hand-rolled sheets of nori filled with rice, seafood and vegetables) and inari (deep-fried tofu bags stuffed with rice).
They have been told how important it is to treat food with respect, because making sushi isn’t the same as cooking a meal; it is part philosophy and part food preparation.
“It is going into your stomach to sustain you,” Kolouch says. “In respecting the food, you respect yourself. Kolouch, a member of the Slow Food movement, has been teaching cooking classes for close to two decades. “I try to explain to them that they have power over what they put in their bodies.”
The class separates into two groups that move to their respective workstations. Tony Salvino, 12, gingerly layers his nori with rice and is adding cucumber. He seems to know what he’s doing, although he says he just listened carefully and is doing what Kolouch told him to do. Samantha Mollard, 16, opted to go the vegetarian route, filling pockets of fried tofu with rice, and topping it with black sesame seeds.
Meanwhile, Amanda Carney, 15, is having trouble rolling her combination of rice, avocado, cucumber and crab.
“Too much rice,” Kolouch says softly. “You forgot to leave room at the edges to roll and seal. Try again.”
Amanda adjusts and regroups.
A frustrated voice announces, “Now I see why sushi is so expensive.” Meanwhile, Takashi Mollard, 12, has just completed a near-perfect roll.
Over at the all-guy table, Tony; Brandon Osborn, 13; Joshua Nash, 12; and Ismael Ait-Mahmoud, 13, are remarkably focused. All are from Aurora, except for Ismael, who was born in Boliva to a father from Morocco but is visiting his father and grandparents in Denver while his mom is home in Florida.
“I have a Korean friend who makes sushi, and I signed up to see if I was doing it right,” he says. “My goal is to go around the world and eat food from every country.”
He chats while Kolouch gathers the class around her to tell them places to shop for the foods used in making their meal of miso soup and sushi.
All that’s left after choosing ingredients is to slice the rolls, arrange them, garnish the plates with wasabi (mixed by the students) and pickled ginger (purchased by Kolouch from an Asian specialty store), and eat – which they do with gusto. What looked like overabundance ends up being just about enough.
Already, Joshua is talking about taking another class, as are Tony and Tyler Bray, 14.
Aurora recreation specialist Pam Hueseman is pleased.
“Each year (classes have) gotten bigger and better, and last September, opening our new teaching kitchen has really made a difference,” she says. “Before that we had used other facilities, including home economics rooms in the high school, so now we have a pretty spiffy little operation with offerings for everyone.”
The spiffy operation also offers classes as diverse as instruction for the developmentally disabled and corporate teambuilding, and from cookies, cakes and candies to mile-high baking, natural and ethnic foods.
For more information or to register, call 303-326-8630 or go to auroragov.org and click on “recreation programs,” then “cooking.”
Staff writer Ellen Sweets can be reached at 303-820-1284 or esweets@denverpost.com.
