Young cooks learn a recipe for success

DELICIOUS: Kids Can Cook Kitchen chef Chris Fortune shares the delicious aroma of a vegetable pilaf dish during a cooking class for a group of Year 7 and 8 pupils at Greytown School using vegetables the children helped to grow. PHOTO/LYNDA FERINGA

Greytown School pupils are learning the delicious art of making a meal using vegetables grown in a garden they helped tend.

Deputy principal Neil Preston said Year 7 and 8 pupils had yesterday gathered before the mobile Kids Can Cook Kitchen with culinary tutor Chris Fortune and learnt the finer points of creating a vegetable pilaf dish comprising ingredients like broad beans, peas, corn, silverbeet, tomatoes and other produce, with some of the produce grown in the school gardens where the temporary kitchen was laid out.

Mr Preston said Year 3, 4 and 5 pupils will take their turn cooking and taste-testing a meal today during the third annual visit of chef Fortune to the school.

"He always teaches about healthy eating and the ingredients come from our garden. It's all about educating kids and getting them to try out these same dishes at home. They get to help and watch the meal being made and they get to take that recipe home.

The pupils are led through the meal preparation using added information about where the meal was developed, its history, and fun facts behind the vegetables that were used like the links between courgettes and cucumbers and the "silk" found on an ear of corn.

The lesson also trades on the popularity of the Junior MasterChef television show, which also helped curry favour for the lessons among pupils, Mr Preston said.

"It makes it all interesting and entertaining, especially with shows like MasterChef being very popular right now for kids this age."

Mr Fortune said he will also hold classes at Kahutara School tomorrow in a successful programme that had already helped "tens of thousands of children to eat healthy, easy to prepare, sustainable foods that have been made in front of them, from their own school gardens or local community".

"Everybody gets to try, and taste, the cooking we do and there are lots of magic moments. Give a child breakfast and they will eat for a day, teach them how to cook and they will eat for a lifetime."