The Craft Guild of Chefs contacted me because Brake Bros wanted fifty of the Craft’s members to go into schools and give demonstrations using British produce; Brakes would supply ingredients to the value of £50.

Brakes gave me contact details of a local school that they supply. The school’s Food Technology Teacher and I agreed that I would run two sessions for year 9 students. The year 9 students were covering multi-cultural studies and so I decided to use British produce to make some ethnic dishes: Caribbean cornmeal Johnny cakes filled with a sweet chicken curry and turkey or sausage chow mein.

A lot of the students turned their noses up when I told them what we would be doing but, with assistance in preparing the dishes from a couple of students, they changed their tune and not one of the 20 students in each class left a scrap of food on their plate!

The members of staff were really thrilled with the demonstrations and talk. They said that the students really benefited from the sessions as they saw that British produce in season is not expensive, can be tasty and can be used in all types of cooking.