By Lisa Parrish, GMC editor 

The regional high school, serving the communities of Charlestown, Richmond, and Hopkinton, hosts a culinary arts program headed by 26-year veteran chef instructor Linda Musch, CCE, AAC. Through the years, Musch has taught everything from ice carving to inviting a guest speaker to instruct students how to decorate eggs using an old traditional Ukrainian style dying process. Musch is always on the lookout for ways to provide her students with new culinary skills and experiences.

This February, Musch and her students catered an employee appreciation luncheon for the Charlestown town hall employees at the request of the town manager. Twenty students prepared and served cream of assorted mushroom soup, salad, gluten-free chicken cordon bleu with veloute’, buttered broccoli, roasted red potatoes and chocolate mousse torte in the city’s town hall building.

“I looked around and thought the students should use a synchronized dining service,” said Musch. She had recently attended an ACF event where the professional banquet serving technique was employed with servers coming to a table, waiting for a signal from the lead server and simultaneously serving two guests at a time. Plates are also cleared in the same fashion right and left simultaneously.

“I explained how I wanted it done and the students practiced before serving,” Musch said. Then she said, “Let’s do this,” and the synchronized service began. “The first course was not very smooth. But, by the last course, the students had it down. They did a really nice job.”

Junior Madeline Kuba was a server at the event and said, “It was actually the first time I had heard of synchronized serving. We had no experience what so ever.”

Kuba agreed that the first course was challenging. “We talked it through and got on the same page. By the end of the service we were able to pull it off. It was refreshing for us to do something new,” Kuba said.

“I definitely thought it was going to be a challenge. It’s a very dependent type of service. You have to work as a team,” she said. Kuba also appreciated the benefit of the lesson. She continued, “It helps us understand more of dining services. It really can almost be an art form.”

According to Musch, the event organizer also reported the guests appreciated the meal and students’ presentation skills.

In addition to catering events, Chariho culinary students also gain valuable experience in the school’s own restaurant, South County Room, which is open on a block schedule.

Recently, students prepared and served a special event: an international buffet in the South County Room for about 50 people. The event included students selecting a country and researching that country’s traditions and culinary inspirations. They were required to create two recipes from their research. Countries such as Japan, China, France, Morocco, Italy and India were featured.

Culture is embedded into the curriculum in other ways. For several years, Musch has invited a guest instructor to teach students the very old art of Pysanky, a Russian Orthodox tradition of decorating eggs. Pat Perry, guest instructor, was taught the method by her grandmother. Now she instructs the culinary arts students how to intricately apply wax and create designs by dipping eggs into dye with wax-covered areas resisting the dye. The wax is cleared off and redrawn to repeat the process again with darker colors.

Kuba participated in the lesson last year as a sophomore. She said, “We were taught how to blow out the eggs and decorate them using very traditional designs.” She enjoyed learning about the Ukrainian culture and “how people put their culinary spin into it.”

Musch said, “Our culinary students do a little bit of everything from Pro Start competitions to a Cinco de Mayo teacher appreciation luncheon to an arts festival that features the Ukrainian eggs, fantasy gingerbread houses decorated with icing, and three-tier cakes.” And, Kuba agrees, “We have done so many cool things in our culinary classes.”

Photo courtesy of Linda Musch, CCE, AAC, chef instructor at Chariho Area Career and Technical Center.