Indonesian cooking at Elwood PS

Elwood Primary School Kitchen Garden Program students got a taste of Indonesia when visiting chefs from Bali hosted a cooking demonstration.

The guest chefs were from one of Bali’s finest contemporary Indonesian restaurants – Merah Putih – and gave the students a hands-on lesson on how to prepare some popular local dishes.

Head chef Keiran Morland, a former Melbourne resident, and his pastry chef Gusi Putra, cooked up popular rice dish, nasi goreng and coconut pancakes called dadar gulung.

Grade 4 students got involved in the demonstration by rolling up the delicious coconut crepes, which were filled with coconut and palm sugar.

Once the dishes were prepared everyone sat down to enjoy a shared meal, using chopsticks for the nasi goreng – which was a challenge for some students and produced lots of smiles!

The students also shared stories with the visiting chefs about what they had learnt in their kitchen garden classes, and some of the yummy dishes they had been preparing from the produce grown in the school garden.

Kieran said he was very impressed with their knowledge of how to grow and cook seasonal food, and that some of the skills they had gained were things he only learnt when he became a chef.

The demonstration was organised by chef Geoff Lindsay, owner of Elwood’s Dandelion restaurant, where the visiting chefs cooked a special Taste Of Indonesia dinner as part of The Age Good Food Month.

Geoff has been a long-time supporter of the Kitchen Garden Program at Elwood Primary and raised funds for a new oven in the school’s kitchen by donating money from the corkage charge at the restaurant.

Geoff said he was inspired to organise the cooking demonstration, held in November last year, by the Elwood students’ Indonesian studies.

“I knew the kids [in the Kitchen Garden Program] were also studying Indonesian, so I felt it was a good fit to come here,” Geoff said.

“I hope it gave a bit of context to their studies of Indonesian.”

We’re absolutely sure it did Geoff – thank you so much for your support!

To find a recipe for nasi goreng head to our homepage, scroll down and search for the name.