Culinary Workshop der 5a in St. Josef

During a Culinary Arts Workshop with Mr and Mrs Birenti, class 5a cooked an Italian buffet with lots of delicious food. Our top favourites were the many tasty desserts. Our favourite savoury dish was macaroni with tomato sauce. All in all, the whole class enjoyed the experience. Would recommend!

Sergej Rakulj, Giorgi Seifarth, 5a

The students of class 5a had the pleasure of preparing and enjoying many delicious dishes under the guidance of the experienced chef Domenico Birenti and his spouse Lucia Birenti. It was an instructive, successful and joyful experience that they were all able to share together.

Majda Besirovic, Flora Kohlbacher, 5a

Cooking Together is Part of the Fun!

There is a famous quote that says, ”Nothing brings people together like good food”, and after our Culinary Workshop at St Josef we definitely agree with this statement. Under the guidance of chef de cuisine Domenico Birenti and his wife Lucia Birenti, class 5a cooked a wonderful feast to enjoy together, ranging from savoury overbaked turkey rolls to sweet desserts, such as gâteau au chocolat. As the working language was English, we could also practice our English and learn a lot of new words.

Earlier this school year in our English lesson, we were working on the topic of food. As some students of our class came up with the idea to cook something hands-on, Mr Lutsch suggested doing a culinary workshop with Mr Birenti, which sounded great, but also very risky at time like these, when the Covid-19 Virus was making its way in every city once again with the fifth Corona wave.

The day before the workshop, Mr Birenti visited us to brief us at the AkadGym in our English class. He was very well prepared and organised, with all the recipes written down and printed, plenty enough for every one of us. We could choose the recipes on our own and ask numerous questions about the recipes, the kitchen and the chef Mr Birenti himself.

In the training kitchen at St Josef everything was well organised, and we got a brief introduction into the kitchen and on which group would use which worktop and station. Mr Birenti would do his best at being everywhere to help the students with their dishes, be it in the second row explaining how to stir the risotto the right way, or helping students with the pasta fillings. If one of the students had nothing to do, because their dish was baking in the oven, they could help other students with their dishes, or clean up the working space, so we did not have to do that much later on.

After all the cooking was done, we all dined as a group at a large table in the school’s training restaurant. While everyone was finishing their last bites of the main course and was looking forward to the desserts, some students were back to the kitchen again to put the finishing touches to the lasagne strudel with strawberry cream. When everybody had finished enjoying their food, the students went back to the kitchen to do the dishes, clean the counters and put everything back in its place.

Even though not every student of the 5a was present because of Covid-19, we all had a great time cooking with each other, cleaning and sharing the food we had prepared. The experience of learning things outside our typical English classroom setting was great and everyone hopes to repeat such a unique experience.

Wath the video for the recipes of the dishes we cooked: