Edible Ottawa

Pasta Math

• Photo by Kate Settle

  Xue and her fellow classmates from Churchill Alternative Public School watching Chef Steve Wall demonstrate how to cut fresh pasta into perfect squares. Chef Wall's pasta-making classes at Supply and Demand Foods & Raw Bar are usually a more initimate affair — imagine six adults, sipping wine while learning to make fresh pasta for their en-familia style dinner later that evening. But this time, Wall took on 24 eager Grade 5 and 6 students, one super-excited teacher, more parent volunteers per student than most field trips, one writer, and one photographer — all in his 300-square-foot basement prep kitchen. Thanks Chef.

• There was no day-dreaming while a teacher droned on about Pythagorean this or circumference that during this math lesson.

• The hands-on approach engaged students, such as Mariko, centre, giving them an opportunity to roll perfect squares of pasta dough into the shape of garganelli.

• Steve and Jen Wall, above, know the precarious economics of running a small, independent restaurant. That's why they design a tight, no-waste menu at Supply and Demand that uses the leftover cuts from their popular tuna crudo, above, to make another menu stalwart — the squid-ink rigatoni with tuna and proscuitto meatballs.

• Tuna crudo

• Squid-ink rigatoni with tuna and proscuitto meatballs