GUEST BLOG: New cooks on the books

By Cracking Good Food director Adele Jordan

On Tuesday 22 February, we trained up some new Cracking Cooks to join the team and add even more to our cooking repertoire and the classes and sessions we can offer. After spending two hours going through the ethos of Cracking Good Food and trying to cover all the things we’ve both done and have planned (so much!), we then got to grips with the actual cooking.

Experienced cooking leader Beth Creedon, of Dig and Guestrant fame, took the reins by splitting the cooks into two groups. They were asked to talk through making a vegetable cobbler, step by step, to each other. It’s hard getting used to talking through things that are instinctive for a cook like chopping an onion or celeriac, but they all took it in turns, in front of each other. To watch how captivated they were when listening to those who spoke, you’d swear they’d never chopped an onion in their life!


So we’ve now got a great new team, in addition to our other great Cracking Cooks. We’ve got Harjinder, who’s been cooking up Punjabi food for 40 years, Deanna from North Star Deli, Ian from The Parsnipship Collective, Cathy from France, Graeme who was a student living on takeaways and now lives in his kitche, Wendy from On the Eighth Day, Nicola from Fareshare and Emerge, chef Laura and keen cook Alison… with another nine also waiting to be trained up.

So cooking is very much on the agenda… stay tuned for all the exciting things coming up via our new website, to be launched shortly!

GUEST BLOG: Ministry Of Food

By guest blogger CRACKING COOK AVRIL POVAH

The sun was shining as Adele and I set off over the Pennines to Bradford on Monday 24 May. We were going to see the latest Jamie's Ministry Of Food centre, opened by Jamie Oliver following his famous TV programme of the same name. The first opened up in another Yorkshire town, Rotherham, which was highlighted in the show as being one the “fattest” places in England, and we were keen to learn how people were being inspired to get back into the kitchen to cook good wholesome meals instead of eating takeaways and ready meals.

Jamie's Ministry Of Food centres are council funded and their kitchen costs, whatever they may be, are outweighed against the long-term savings in treating obesity in their respective areas. The centres are centrally positioned right in the heart of the towns so local people just passing by can pop in to learn the basics of cooking and how to make good simple meals on a tight budget, or just get friendly advice on recipes, shopping, nutrition, equipment, and local and seasonal ingredients.


Soraya Overend, the project manager at Bradford, made us feel very welcome, showing us the ultra modern and sleek kitchen, perfectly designed with cookery classes in mind. She explained that they offer 10-week cooking programmes covering a range of meals from simple egg dishes to homemade soups, pasta and pizza, and roast dinners. People from all walks of life can learn how to cook quick, simple, healthy and cost-effective meals in just one hour, and the “pass it on” strategy encourages them to tell their friends and family all about it. One lesson is just £4 and you get to eat the food afterwards, either at the centre or to take home.

We arrived early to ask Soraya (pictured on the left, with me on the right and Adele reflected in the window!) how it all started and how it’s going, then joined the Week 5 group for a Thai green curry lesson. Some of the participants had popped in during their work lunch break - what a great idea: learning a new skill and getting fed too! Soraya explained all the ingredients we were using for the Thai green curry - we even had fresh seasonal asparagus to cook with - and demonstrated how to make a Thai green curry paste. There was lots of herb smelling, and we were all hooked on the fresh lemon grass and coriander. We picked from a choice of chicken, prawns or Quorn (which Adele plumped for immediately), then we were let loose on the induction hobs to prepare our stir fries. When we tucked into our creations afterwards, all the fresh flavours came flooding through - it was absolutely delicious!

The next Jamie's Ministry Of Food centre opens in the centre of Leeds this month, and I hope it's as successful as the others. Please come to Manchester, Jamie!


Avril works for Nutrimens and The Sunshine Cafe in Sale. She is also on Cracking Good Food's team of Cracking Cooks and will be running a public session called Tasty Salads With Pulses'n'grains on Tuesday 22 June at Chorlton High (6-9pm). All details on the June and July sessions, which cost just £15 for three hours (£10 concessions), are on the Cracking Good Food website here.

Nutrition, nutrition, nutrition

Last Friday, our Cooking Leaders were guided through the Eat Well Plate (pictured below) with Steffie, a public health nutritionist working for the NHS. Referring to food groups (rather than nutrients), we discussed the importance of balancing our menus with all types of food and talked about how to tailor the Eat Well Plate to be compatible to those on a specific diet, such as dairy-free, or with particular health issues, such as diabetes or high blood pressure. I didn’t realise that white fish wasn’t as oily as tuna, sardines and mackerel or that soya milk has natural oestrogen in it.


We also talked about portion sizes, and it was really interesting to learn that the faster you eat, the less you are aware of the fact that perhaps you’re getting rather full! Our training session also taught us about the Model Of Change, which is the process by which we can alter a habit. It's a wheel that shows the decision-making stages you go through to make a change and relates to almost everything that we do in life: thinking about a change, preparing for it, taking action, making it permanent or lapsing back into old habits. All manner of factors can cause a lapse, and it's perfectly normal; what's important is getting back on track and recognising your potential.

The Cooking Leaders also now know about all the free NHS courses, resources and services that are available to the public and we have phone numbers for health trainers and support groups should we need them. Fascinating. I’d no idea so much was available!

Adele

Cracking Cooks training session

More photographic evidence of the Cracking Cooks hard at work last week...

Cracking Cooks training session, Friday 12 March

There’s nothing quite like getting a group of foodies together to cook up a meal, although our recent event was something of a dinner party with a difference! To be a Cracking Good Food Cooking Leader, our team of Cracking Cooks have to undergo training in everything from food hygiene to health and safety, and this was their second session, held in the Youth Centre at St Clement's Church in Chorlton.

This time, we (the coordinators) wanted the Cracking Cooks to get into practice for leading their upcoming workshops by prepping, cooking and talking us through everything: where the ingredients were grown, how to chop veg safely, which flavours compliment each other... Well, I learned loads! I’d never have thought to add lemon juice to a grated celeriac salad to keep it white, or known to keep the onion roots intact when chopping to make it easier. And I didn’t know that vegetable stock was just a vegetable concentrate either. Wonderful! I just hope I’ll manage to get to all the future cooking sessions, because I’m cracking loads right now. And it can only get better!

Adele

GUEST BLOG: Cracking Cooks training session, Wednesday 3 March

By guest blogger CRACKING COOK RICHARD

It didn’t bode well. The venue (St Ninian’s Church) seemed deserted and when I finally got in, I was presented with a large church hall, a semi-circle of seats and a heater. It looked like it was going to be a long, cold and dull four hours for my Cracking Good Food training to be a Cooking Leader.

However, I was pleasantly surprised. First, Adele greeted us, gushing and motivated as usual; then Beth sidled out of the kitchen and re-introduced herself and the aim of the session. Folders were distributed; teas, coffees and juices offered and pleasantries exchanged; and the room wasn’t as cold as expected – I even took my coat off.

And so the session began. It was well structured, concise and divided into bite-sized pieces. We covered the usual suspects: Health & Safety, How To Run A Cookery Class, Housekeeping For Cooking Sessions, Recipe Sheets Debriefing, Equipment Requisition, Costings and Registration. But we also talked within the group. We discussed issues that surfaced, brought up problems that worried us and raised matters that hadn’t even been thought of. A very agreeable session.


The bit that I/we hadn’t expected was a bit of real cooking. Two recipes had been provided and we divided into a Veggie group and a Meat group. We were set the task of following a recipe (my own personal nightmare) in order to produce either a vegetable cobbler or a sausage something-or-other (don’t care; it wasn't veggie!). It was quite interesting seeing a group of chefs, home cooks or wannabe foodies all come together in a kitchen and interact. We didn’t really have time to form a hierarchy or have squabbles, but it was fun and quick and helped everyone bond. So, within half an hour we had two dishes in the oven for our lunch - giving us enough time to fill out a self-assessment questionnaire. Read on.

Cooking time was literally the time taken to fill in the self-assessment form. This would indicate our learning styles. By ticking a series of questions regarding how we approach life and analysing the results, we discovered how we function. No one could believe how perfect I was, but that’s life.

Following this we ate lunch, disseminated the assessment form, talked at length about future courses, discussed how things were likely to pan out and ironed out any potential problems. So all-in-all a very good, interesting and fruitful course.


P.S. Did I mention that for lunch we had to move to a very cold room (coats on), the vegetable cobbler was voted the best (does my memory serve me right? or is this maybe fictitious?) and the topping was baked to perfection, and Cracking Good Food moves on to the next level. Several more members committed to the cause.