From the Brook: Apprenticeships

For our first day of apprenticeships, the gappers headed to their chosen subject. Savannah, Ryan, and I decided to work in the main house kitchen with Chef Robyn. All of us were excited to take our next steps towards learning skills that would soon benefit our futures. Our first assignment was to learn how to prepare and make gluten-free pasta with home-grown sauce ingredients. The first step was to create the dough ball. We all poured flour onto the freshly cleaned countertops and sculpted them into the shape of a volcano. We began to carefully crack eggs and poured them into the center of the crater. At first, the group assumed it would be an easy and simple task, which it was, but it proved to be challenging. On the sixth pour, all of our egg-filled flour volcanoes erupted from the side, creating a yellowish lava path. 

Thankfully, we all managed to mend the side of our volcanoes and continued to pour the rest of our eggs into the abominable creations. We then pushed the flour together, breaking the eggs within. After pushing and pulling material for what felt like an eternity, we created 3 dough balls. Our next step was to create a red sauce using freshly picked ingredients from the farm, such as bay leaves, celery, carrots, oregano, parsley, peppers, rosemary, sage, thyme, garlic, onions and lastly Italian seasoning. After cleaning the ingredients, we put them in a pot and set them aside to be cooked later for dinner. Our next step was to make our dough balls into noodles. We split our dough balls into fourths and flattened them into long strands. We then fed the long strands through Chef Robyn’s automatic pasta processor, creating the noodles. We cleaned up for the day and went back to the hill house. We put the sauce pot on the stove and let it slow cook for three hours, allowing the sauce to emphasize all of its flavors. When the sauce was ready, we boiled the noodles for 3 minutes and had a lovely dinner. 

Going into my first day of apprenticeships, I expected the tasks to be tedious and difficult. I was pleasantly surprised how fast my initial feelings changed during the experience. It was gratifying, likable and, most importantly, fun. I am thankful to be learning and creating important practical skills to benefit my future self. 

- Niels