School dinners

With the government hoping to change the way people eat in Britain by making cookery lessons compulsory once again, what better topic than to start blogging about food with, so here goes.

As far as I know, cooking lessons – or home economics as it was called then – were compulsory when I was at comprehensive school. We would all turn up with our little wicker baskets full of ingredients, cook a dish and then cradle the basket carefully on the bus on the way home, hoping that nothing would overflow!

I can only recall cooking 3 dishes, there may have been more, but these are the ones I remember: Strawberry cheesecake, spaghetti bolognese and bacon and mushroom risotto. The strawberry cheesecake was a disaster, I have never made it or another cheesecake since. I can’t really remember if the bolognese was good, but I do know that my mum refused to buy minced beef back then, so mine was made with lamb. The risotto however was delicious, and to this day I apply the skills taught in that lesson to most rice dishes that I make. So if I was to advise the government on what meals children should be taught to cook today, bacon and mushroom risotto à la Mrs Mabbit, would definitely be on the list.

So what else should be on the list? I think this is more about skills than what tastes appealing to children, though for them to cook anything again, I suppose they’ll have to like it. So the final list will require a lot of thought. I also don’t think that one list for the whole of Britain would work, things like culture, dietary requirements, geographical location and although many people won’t like to admit it, class will all determine what works best for which schools. Bangers and mash just isn’t going to go down well everywhere in Britain these days!

For the sake of this post though, I’m going to write my 8 suggestions for the list. I’m going to assume that cooking lessons will take place over a standard double lesson which will last for 1 hour and 40 minutes.

1. Bacon (or chicken/onion/another vegetable) and mushroom risotto – so many people don’t know how to cook rice and its such a cheap and filling ingredient that it has got to go on the list.

2. Tomato Sauce. Very versatile and the base ingredient for thousands of dishes. Obviously just cooking tomato sauce isn’t very interesting, so I would suggest adding chicken or vegetables to it and make it into a pasta dish.

3. Sponge cake – everybody wants to make a cake at some point on their lives, and this is the basics to learning how to make more complicated/interesting cakes.

4. Some kind of Casserole using vegetables and meat – teaching the skill of slow cooking.

5. A lesson on cooking eggs and how they can be used as a meal.

6. A crumble – a classic rhubarb or apple crumble, with custard of course!

7. Making pastry. The end results are endless – pie (sweet or savoury), tart, flan, quiche.

8. Difficult to do in one lesson, but I think that learning to cook a roast is an essential skill – especially if part of the governments initiative is to get families eating together again around the table.

I’m sure that everybody has their own ideas about this and you probably disagree with a few of my choices – let me know.

Whether the compulsory cooking lessons will turn Britain into a food respecting and culinarily famous nation, we won’t find out overnight, but it’s a step in the right direction. One group of people that is definitely going to be pleased with the decision though, is basket makers!