We produced a series of flipped classroom videos to save time during kitchen classes and ensure that all students could be engaged by the content typically presented during our classes' opening Chef Meetings.

Students watch the videos before they arrive in the kitchen classroom. This means that the opening Chef Meeting can be a quick recap, with students explaining what they learned – gaining more time for discussion, cooking, and cleaning. 

ALTERNATE CHEF MEETING 

Use this version if student watched the flipped classroom video. 

1. Welcome students and introduce them to the lesson of the day: a Middle Eastern meze platter. We're going to prepare a variety of dishes for our meze platter and take a closer look at how the unique geography and history of the Arabian Peninsula have turned the meze platter into an iconic dish throughout the Mediterranean.
2. First, let’s take a moment to recall the previous lesson because today’s story is directly connected to our story from last week.
   
   • Ask for student volunteers to summarize a few key points from the lesson: During the Song Dynasty, Chinese scientists, engineers, and farmers developed new technology to grow rice more efficiently, which resulted in a surplus, which led to population growth, urbanization, and a burgeoning of cultural, scientific, and technological development.
3. Trade is the invisible force behind all this. Last week we talked about all the incredible innovations that occurred in China during this time. This growth and innovation were a direct result of people having a more secure food source, and they were also entirely dependent on China’s ability to trade and sell the surplus rice and new goods it had with other societies. This takes us to the Arabian Peninsula.
4. Ask students to recall the Silk Road lesson series from sixth grade, when they made dumplings, curry, pasta, and rice pudding.
   
   • Explain that today we’ll be moving west along the Silk Road to the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East. Explain that the Arabian Peninsula was the center of trade—for knowledge, ideas, technology, goods, and food—between the civilizations of Europe, Africa, and Asia for thousands of years. 
5. This brings us back to our recipe for the day: a Middle Eastern meze platter.
   
   • Ask for a student volunteer to describe what a meze platter is (a variety of small snacks eaten together as a meal).
   • Meze platters originated in the Middle East, and today are enjoyed all over the world, especially throughout the Mediterranean region. Typical components of a meze platter include vegetable salads, grilled meats, dips like hummus and baba ganoush, cheeses and yogurts, olives, pickles, and flat breads like pita.
6. Meze platters are symbolic of the importance of trade in Middle Eastern history. Every area has a unique meze platter based on its traditional dishes and ingredients of the region, and mezes change seasonally.
   
   • They are a dish made specifically for socializing, and the story goes that they began thousands of years ago as a way for people to gather around the table with traders or travelers from out of town, to share some of the local culinary specialties and enjoy small bites of whatever the visitor had brought from far away.
   • This mixing of local and foreign food is typical of Middle Eastern cuisine: As a cuisine that developed at the crossroads of civilization, almost every Middle Eastern dish is a mix of ingredients and techniques from near and far.
7. Today we’ll be making a meze platter with pita, hummus, yogurt sauce, and raw vegetables. In keeping with the tradition of meze, we’ll be using seasonal vegetables from our garden, as well as ingredients from farther away. Our meze represents ingredients from all four climatic regions of the Arabian Peninsula.
8. Think-Pair-Share: Before coming here, you all saw a video about the four climatic regions of the Arabian Peninsula.
   
   • Take a moment to think back on what you remember from the video. Use the visual aid for reference.
   • Give students 10-20 seconds of silent reflection.
   •  Now turn to a neighbor and take about two minutes to recall as much as you can from the video. See how much detail you can use to describe the four climatic regions represented on the poster, and see if you can identify which region each of our recipes represents.
   • Facilitate a full-class summary of the content from the video: With a raised hand, who can share one or two points from their conversation with their neighbor? Ask students to identify which climatic region each component of the meze represents.
9. Ask students to wash their hands and go to their table groups.