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Chef’s assistant Tawny Laurence checks the seskoula yiahni me feta or Swiss chard with celery and feta, while Chef Merlyn Baker turns the skartsotsetta or stuffed beef rolls in aromatic tomato sauce and checks the sear. - The Observer/EDEN KRUGER

Merlyn Baker, chef and owner of Foley Station Restaurant, has been teaching a series of cooking classes focused on Greek food at the school.

The first was about appetizers and the second made the dinner plate. There’s still space for the final class in the series, which runs from 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday at the Cove High School Home Ec room where students will learn to make Greek cornbread with cheese and leeks; lamb, potato, egg and lemon soup; and semolina almond cake with Greek aromatic syrup.

Earlier in the year, I had an opportunity to take the second class thanks to Cove Community School coordinator, Patti McClelland. On the menu that night was Swiss chard stewed with celery and feta (seskoula yiahni me feta), stuffed beef rolls in aromatic tomato sauce (skartsotsetta) and fresh pasta with lots of garlic (skordomakarona).

Food enthusiasts taking the course received a class cookbook with detailed recipes written by Chef Baker and lots of room for notes such as, “make this next week” and “long and slow — melt in your mouth.”

The best part of the class was we ate our lessons with classmates who had been oohing and aahing all night. Chef Baker and his assistant, Tawny Laurence, made our plates, piled generously with each dish.

An instructor for the school for two years, Baker supplemented his cooking lessons with maps. You never thought chefs moonlighted as geography teachers?

Tack a map up in your kitchen because geography suggests what kind of food is available in a particular region and therefore, what kind of food became culturally-relevant to the people there.

The photo-copied map included in the cookbook made the introduction to knowing Greece in a culinary sense simple with line drawings of squids placed off the southern coast of Pellponnesos; a chicken and olives between Kalamata and Sparta; and the entire island of Crete possessing nearly everything you’d need to be content: sheep, grapes, olives, citrus fruits, goats and of course, a fertile toner-gray ocean populated with fish, some swimming east, some west.

Baker, since he acted not only as chef, but as instructor, was willing to answer a variety of questions. People wanted to know everything from how feta available in the United States compares to feta in Greece to the best way to sharpen knifes (with a sharpening stone, and not a steel; and sharp enough to shave your whiskers). We got a peek into the industry debate over whether calling the individual parts of garlic “toes” or “cloves” was more accurate

Together, we all gushed on the greatness of chard.

Students in the class weren’t simply taught recipes, but preparation techniques and approaches to food.

For the beef rolls, Baker emphasized that veal or pork or even gluten steaks could be used. Home cooks could improvise this way, pounding out the meat just the same. He also suggested that his recipe for the beef roll filling was but one possibility.

Among the varied offerings the Cove Community School has had, Luz Jimenez, well-known for her tamales, has taught Mexican cooking where she prepared tamales, tortillas and chili rellenos.

Dorene McCarthy taught a class in making fermented vegetables and Ji Kim, an EOU student, offered a sampling of traditional Korean foods in her Korean culture class.

Chef Merlyn Baker begins to roll the skartsotsetta after pounding out the meat and adding the filling made of parsley, garlic, feta and Graviera cheese. - Photo/Patti McClelland

“Besides welcoming our instructors back, we look forward to having guest Chef Carolyn Jensen of the Stange Manor and Linda Clayville of Nature’s Pantry offer classes next fall,’’ she said. “We also seem to have a need in our area for basic cooking classes. We are looking at starting a series in ‘Back to the Basics.’”

Finishing its fifth year of operation, the school has had success with enrollment rates increasing since an effort was made to let people know that classes are open to anyone, not just residents of Cove.

The school has also thrived with continued support from the Cove School District and community partners, both of which offer places to hold classes.

McClelland said the school and individual instructors get many repeat participants.

“Once they find out how much fun we have, they tend to keep coming,” she said.

Student Stephanie Stonebreaker, of La Grande, confirmed McClelland’s assessment. New to cooking, Stonebreaker said she would be back to the community school for more classes. Midway through the class’s dinner, she said, “(The two-hour class) was definitely worth the wait.”

Chase Shirley, also of La Grande, concurred. He said he had taken Mexican cooking classes before and now loved to cook. Even before the class was over, he said he wanted to sign up for the next class.

A caveat: an hour and a half into the class, your classmates will start to be unruly and your stomach will groan that it is starving. Keep in mind that Baker and Laurence were not cooking behind glass. Instead, they were right there and you could hear the sizzle in the pans and smell the garlic. The skordomakarona alone called for six heads of the pungent vegetable.

To register for the Greek cooking class, call Cove Community School coordinator Patti McClelland at 786-2999.

A wine and food pairing course taught by Warren Gilstrap is planned for May 9.