Fegely Middle School students in Portage got a taste of their principal’s childhood in the cafeteria Wednesday.
Ann Marie Caballero introduced them to arroz con pollo, a Mexican chicken and rice dish her grandmother taught her how to make.
“It’s one of my favorite dishes from when I was a kid,” Caballero said. “It’s very special to me. It brings my grandmother back.”
Caballero inherited the cookware her Nana used to make the dish and still uses it for that purpose when she serves it to her family.
As a 16-year-old, Caballero drove to her grandmother’s narrow, shotgun-style brick home in South Chicago to learn how to prepare the recipe. “Learning to cook it was trial and error,” but she got it right after a few tries.
It took some work for Kelly Pennington, the school’s food nutrition operations manager, to scale it up for the students. The cafeteria had to take the recipe that originally served eight, prepared in a home kitchen, and make it work for 400 students in a commercial kitchen.
“It became a bit of a challenge” to convert the recipe for so many, but it paid off, she said.
“It looks like we’re going to go through all of it,” Pennington said, a sign of how popular arroz con pollo is with the students.
“This is all scratch cooking. Our goal is fresh cooking,” she said.
Server Shanna Conroy appreciated the kids’ reaction to the new dish. “I think it’s neat that they’ll try new things,” she said.
“I was a very, very picky eater,” she confessed. “I still am, just not as bad.”
Like many adults who were picky eaters, she has learned to enjoy different foods she once refused before tasting.
Each Fegely student was given a ticket to vote yes or no on whether the dish should be served again. The answer was overwhelmingly yes. By the end of the sixth grade’s voting, only four tickets were in the “no” bucket.
Four sixth-graders offered their reaction, all positive.
“I felt like I recognized this,” Mckayla King said. It reminded her of her mother’s Puerto Rican rice dish. “I feel like the rice was the best part of it.”
“I’m down for trying things from different cultures and stuff,” she said. “Whenever somebody shares their family recipe with me, I feel really good about it.”
Jack Crozier’s cooking is relatively simple. “I make the best eggs, scrambled eggs,” he said. It’s important to remember the cooking continues even when the stove’s burner is shut off because the pan is still hot, he noted. Timing is everything.
Crozier liked the arroz con pollo. “This is a lot more well-balanced, just different in general,” from his family’s traditional dishes like spaghetti.
Bexley Bailey said she is no stranger to her family’s kitchen. “I cook a lot. I like to bake cookies, bake cakes,” she said. Bailey enjoys having breakfast for dinner with her dad sometimes.
Gluten-free alfredo is one of her mother’s dishes and Bailey’s favorite. “It tastes really good, probably better than anything I know,” she said.
“I make really good potato salad. I like adding all the seasoning,” she said.
Kayden Fisher is learning from a master. “I cook. My mom is a chef,” he said. She’s teaching him how to prepare dishes like chicken carbonara. He liked the flavoring of the arroz con pollo.
“Nana’s kitchen started it all for us,” Caballero said. “Whenever we get together, where are we? We’re in our kitchens.”
Nana’s kitchen was large, with a large dining table, dark wood cabinetry and burnt orange walls. “It was the hub. That was the heart, that was the kitchen,” Caballero said.
It was at the peninsula where her grandmother taught Caballero the recipes that were in her head rather than on note cards. Now they’re in Caballero’s head.
She rattled off the recipe as any good cook would, laughing as she realized she left off one of the ingredients when she got to the point in the preparation where it was needed.
Caballero gave the recipe to the kitchen staff to try out and was pleased with how close the flavor was to what she prepares in her own kitchen.
Wednesday’s treat for the students, the debut of arroz con pollo, was part of a push for Portage students to experience various ethnic foods.
“The secret ingredient is truly the love. It’s cooking from your heart,” Caballero said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
