Lessons Go Outdoors for Cooking with Fire
Mrs Barker took our Year 10’s lessons outdoors this week when teaching high-skilled chicken portioning and de-boning. Pupils made a fresh marinade with chili, lime, and coriander that had been grown at Queen’s in the Queen’s kitchen garden. It, therefore, made sense to take the marinated meats outdoors to our Queen’s kitchen garden where pupils learnt how to safely cook on an open fire.
Along with the marinated meats that the pupils grilled, they made homemade flatbreads to serve the chicken in along with a homemade mango, red onion, and chili relish. As well as with the meats, pupils also learnt fruit preparation skills during the day, shaping and filling a dessert dish that was baked in the fire and served with a homemade real Madagascan vanilla custard using vanilla pods ethically sourced by local South West vanilla company LittlePod.
Mr. Mann, Head of Food and Preparation, said, ‘Being able to take our pupils outdoors to cook with fire is a wonderful opportunity bringing a new dimension to teaching food at Queen’s. Cooking with fire brings with it fantastic flavours to foods, lending bold, earthy and smoky notes to dishes.
Queen’s goes wild during ‘No Mow May’
Allocating these small spaces for nature will have a number of other benefits, including:
- Promoting sustainable landscapes
- Encouraging native wildflowers
- Improving biodiversity
- Reducing CO2 emissions by not using mowers as much
Mr. Matthew’s cheesy party snacks!
There are few things more pleasing at a party than a cheese straw and our budding little chefs have been developing their pastry skills by creating their own culinary masterpieces this week. Mr. Matthew, Head of Prep at Queen’s brought pupils from Prep to Food and Nutrition in Senior school for the first in a series of Queen’s culinary after school masterclasses.
The aim of these new weekly cookery workshops is to inspire our young Queen’s chefs to learn new practical skills, develop life skills, instill a love of cooking (and have a little foodie fun in the Senior school kitchen classrooms).
Mr. Mann, Head of Food and Nutrition said, ‘both the pupils and Mr. Matthew, created some beautiful buttery and crispy, crunchy cheese savoury snacks using two different kinds of cheese, both an English Chedder and an Italian Parmesan’.
