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chefsatschool, Coulter Primary, eatingtogether, fair trade, practicalcookery

Cooking in Coulter

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Cooking Sessions

To start  our Commonwealth cooking project, P4-7 made a number of recipes from all around the Commonwealth. Soda bread from Northern Ireland came out the oven looking a bit strange but tasted yummy!  We cooked up a treat and made ANZAC biscuits from Australia and New Zealand.  They were gone in a matter of minutes. P4-7 also made Jamaican rice and peas but were surprised to find out the peas are actually kidney beans! P1-3 had great fun deciding which toppings to put on the porridge they made and loved using a rolling pin and bowl as a makeshift mortar and pestle to grind the mixture for the Nigerian ginger beer. They loved making the curried chicken wraps and  sweet and sticky barfi, eaten at Hindu festivals in India.

 
 

P1-3 have great table manners!

Grating lemon peel and fresh ginger for our Nigerian ginger beer

Fairtrade Breakfast

The whole school participated in hosting a Fairtrade breakfast for family and friends. Before the hectic day started, we made moist muffins using fairtrade bananas, sugar and  mixed spice. They were in such high demand that we needed to half them to feed the hungry crowds!

Chef Ruari

Ruari, the chef from the local restaurant visited to do some cooking demos with us. He showed us great recipes such as pan-fried lamb (not everyone’s favourite but most people enjoyed it), pancakes and maple syrup and Jamaican jerk chicken, which was the most popular dish throughout the project. To make the session even better, Ruari produced a refreshing tropical fruit smoothie and we got to taste mango, passion fruit and coconut.

Ruari making jerk chicken
Drinking every last drop of our tropical fruit smoothies.

It was great being able to use all our shiny, new cooking equipment during the project. The project helped us improve our cooking skills but also gave us the chance to apply our number and measurement skills.  We all now know a lot more about the geography of the Commonwealth too and can’t wait until the games begin in Glasgow in the summer.

Written by Mariana, Freya and Irvine  (P6)

chefsatschool, eatingtogether, fair trade, Lamington Primary, practicalcookery

Commonwealth Cooking with Lamington Primary

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Cooking Sessions

Lamington Primary P1-P7 have been doing  practical cooking sessions as part of the Commonwealth cooking project.  Each week the recipe came from a different country in the Commonwealth. P1-4 made haggis, neeps and tatties from Scotland, leek & potato soup from Wales, pancakes and maple syrup from Canada, curried chicken wraps and raita from India. P5-7  made ANZAC biscuits from New Zealand and Australia, ginger beer from Nigeria, Jamiacan rice and peas and soda bread from Northern Ireland. During fairtrade fortnight, both classes made fairtrade  banana spiced muffins from Grenada.

P5-7 and their soda bread - straight fron the oven!
Making Nigerian ginger beer the traditional way.

 The ginger beer was like marmite, you either loved it or hated it! Strangely, all of the girls hated the ginger beer and most of the boys liked it.  Our teachers said it was lovely to be able to sit round the table together and taste the food we made. P1-4 ate up their leek and potato soup like there was no tomorrow.  This is a good recipe to try at home as it was so easy.

P1-4 enjoying their Indian buffet. Yummy!

We did a survey to find out what dish was most popular. The outcome was that the classes enjoyed both eating and making the baking recipies. Our favourite recipes were the muffins, the soda bread  and the Anzac biscuits.

We all loved the sweetness of the ANZAC biscuits.

Through these cooking sessions we have developed our cooking skills, like cutting techniques, weighing, combining and moulding. We have also developed skills for life, learning and work. We used numeracy to measure, and double and half quantities, literacy to read and write recipes and also improved our communication and time management skills when working in groups.

Delicious Demo

Ruari, a chef from a local restaurant, came to our school and gave us a cooking demonstration.  The first day he came in, he cooked some delicious pancakes with irresistible maple syrup and juicy blueberries.  This all linked in with Canada.

On the second day, Ruari cooked some jerk chicken from Jamaica. It tasted moist and had a nice kick to it. We also tried tropical fruit smoothie and got a chance to taste our first piece of fresh coconut.  Ruari cracked the coconut open with a hammer! He  told us lots of facts about food too. Did you know that the coconuts you see in the shops don’t look like that when they grow on trees?

When local chef Ruari asked us if we wanted pancakes, we all said ,"yes chef!"

We thought Ruari’s demos were really interesting.  At the end, we got to ask him lots of questions about working with food and the good and bad points about being a chef.

 Commonwealth Research

We also did some research on Commonwealth Countries to link in with our cooking sessions. We found out about countries from all the continents in the world, everywhere from Belize to Papua New Guinea. We got most of our information from the internet, books and atlases, did some note taking and then presented our research in a poster.

P5-7 showing off their Commonwealth posters.

 

To finish off our project we are planning to have a Commonwealth buffet for pupils, parents and friends at our end of year service. We can’t wait to taste that delicious food all over again.

Blog written by P5-7