Parmco Cooking Challenge Week One

Today we made some yummy Chicken with Tomato and Oregano.  This was the same recipe that Brett McGreggor cooked for us when he visited, but it was great to get stuck in and have a go ourselves.  We were even able to see if we could remember and use some of the tips he gave us - THANKS BRETT.

It was lots of fun.


We set ourselves up as three groups, all cooking the same dish.  We had a copy of the recipe each and then it was up to us to follow the directions and cook the dish.
We had to make some adjustments to our cooking to fit into our time allowance and we certainly learnt how reading the instructions all the way through before starting is important!


For the recipe of todays dish please follow this link. Chicken with Tomato and Oregano
Also Don't forget to vote for Ahuroa School, we'd really like to win the amazing kitchen.
vote for Ahuroa School

Cooking with Brett McGreggor

Cooking with Brett McGreggor - How cool was this!!

We were super lucky to have Brett come to our school today and cook with a group of students.

We got to see him cook and he gave us lots of useful tips for our own cooking.

We also got to taste the delicious chicken with tomato and oregano that he cooked.

Thanks Brett and Parmco for giving us this great opportunity.  We are looking forward to the weekly challenge in September and being able to apply the tips and hints to our own cooking.

Welcome to cooking Term 3

Its already term 3 and we have another round of cooking club.  It seems to be a very popular option.  This term we have a mixture of students, some continuing on from last term, others returning after a break, and some for the very first time.

Again we have a very exciting term lined up.

On Wednesday 7th August we have master chef Brett McGregor coming in to cook with us.  This is a special initiation from the 'lets cook programme in schools'.  He will be cooking with us and I am sure we can all pick up a few new tricks, as well as tasting some delicious food.  We will be cooking chicken with tomatoes and oregano.

The competition side of the lets cook programme, will run from the 2nd - 23rd September, we will definitely be participating in this again.  Last year we came so close!  Each week of the competition we will receive recipes and cooking tips and be able to watch a video demonstration of Brett cooking the dish.
By entering the competition and having family and friends vote for our school we will be in with a change of winning a classroom full of state-of-the-art kitchen appliances.  (Something our cooking club is sorely in need of!) The students can also win spot prizes for completing Bretts weekly cooking challenges.

In between these two events we will try our hand at a range of other dishes chosen by the students.   We will plan our cooking in one week, with students considering time constraints and budgets, then cook the chosen dishes the following week.

Term 2 provided us with some amazing opportunities for cooking.  We attended a Food and You careers experience day, at the Kumeu show grounds,  catered for a Photography Exhibition Opening, Cooked for other members in the school as well as having a little bit of competition between ourselves! It was a fantastic term.  Students worked well together, shared their ideas and demonstrated their developing and improving cooking skills.  Well done to all of you.

Thank you lunch for the club parents

Each term this year we have had wonderful parents, who give up their time and share their expertise with us in clubs.  To thank them for all their efforts and patiences, the cooking club prepared a special lunch for them.

We had to think carefully about and special dietry needs, our budget and the time it would take to prepare and cook each dish.

We then decided that rather than boring old sausage rolls and club sandwiches we would really like to do something special so........

We planned a three course meal with all the trimmings!

We learnt how to set a table correctly with all the bells and whistles, the boys even found flowers in the school grounds to decorate.

Our meal consisted of:     Tomato Soup with Bread Rolls

                                         Moroccan Chicken and Potatoes

                                         Apple Crumble with ice cream or cream.

We had so much fun and I think the parents all went away with very full tummies!

DONKEY DROPS AGAIN!

These are a favourite sweet treat - so we made them again to sell at school.  

Making a product for someone to buy, means that we need to think about the tastes of others, what they might want to buy rather than what we want to cook. It also means we need to work as a team to get product make and to a consistent standard of presentation!   Nobody wants to buy something that doesn't look good.

The money that we collect from our product sales will help cover the costs of our cooking.  

It is really important that we begin to think about how much things cost and how to budget for our cooking wishes.

Next week we are going to practice making a finger food product that we could use to cater the Photography Exhibition at Estuary Arts in June.

During Term 1 2013 we are looking at different tastes, how people make choices about the food that they eat, while enjoying making some amazing food.

Mango Lassi Recipe

Mango Lassi Recipe

INGREDIENTS

1 cup plain yogurt

1/2 cup milk

1 cup chopped mango (peeled and stone removed) 

or - tinned is ok if you remove the syrup

4 teaspoons sugar, to taste

A dash of ground cardamom (optional)

METHOD

Put mango, yogurt, milk, sugar and cardamom into a blender and blend for 2 minutes, then pour into individual glasses, and serve. Can sprinkle with a little cardamom.

The lassi can be kept refrigerated for up to 24 hours.

Yield: Makes about 2 cups.

Curried Sausages

Curried Sausages

Ingredients

2 teaspoons oil

8 sausages

1 onion, chopped

2 small apples

1 teaspoon curry powder

1 tablespoon Edmonds plain baking flour

3/4 cup beef stock

Preparation

Slice sausages

Chop onions and dice apple.

Heat oil in a frying pan

Add onion and cook until clear. 

Add apple

Stir in curry powder and cook for 30 seconds

Stir in flour and cook for 30 seconds

Gradually add stock, stirring constantly until mixture boils

Reduce heat and add sausages

Cook for a further 5 minutes to heat through

serve with rice

Spicy Filo Triangles

Spicy Filo Triangles

2 sheets filo pastry1 tbsp sunflower oil

½ tsp coriander seeds, coarsely crushed

Vegetable filling

1 potato,  peeled and diced

1 small carrot, peeled and diced

1 cup of frozen peas

1 tbsp curry powder

1 tbsp chopped fresh coriander

pinch of salt

Cook the diced potato and carrot in a saucepan of boiling water for 5 minutes. 

Add the peas and cook for a further 2 minutes.
Drain well and tip the vegetables into a bowl. 

Stir in the curry paste, coriander and salt, 

mash the mixture slightly to combine. 

Leave to cool.

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F, gas mark 6). 

Taking one sheet of filo pastry at a time (keeping the other sheet covered to prevent it from drying out), 

cut widthways into 6 equal strips, 

Brush them with a little of the oil.

Lay one of the pastry strips lengthways in front of you and put a rounded tbsp of the filling in the middle of the end nearest to you. 

Pick up one end corner and fold it diagonally over the filling to make a triangular shape, flattening the filling slightly. 

Continue folding the strip over in a triangular shape until you come almost to the end. Trim off excess pastry from the end. 

Repeat with the remaining filo pastry and filling to make 12 triangles in all.

Place the filo triangles on a non-stick baking sheet, brush the tops with the remaining oil and scatter over the crushed coriander seeds. Bake for 10–15 minutes or until golden.

Week 8 - Cooking challenge Number 2

Well done again to our teams
We had a number of our group members away today, which meant that we all had to work extra hard to get our food ready on time.

Team 1 - Vegetarian Samosa
Team 2 - Curried Sausages
Team 3 - Mango Lassi

Again it was boys team who won. their curried sausages were tasty and ready in good time.
I wonder if they will make it 3 out of 3 next week as they head into their dessert challenge.

There were some interesting conversations going on during the session, especially about whether or not it was sensible to eat pre-cooked foods (Like sausages) before they have been reheated.
Some of the other conversations today were about why you might want to be a vegetarian.  Some of the group found the vegetarian options lacking in flavour and had plenty of sensible suggestions as to how they could have fixed this.  Vegetarians in the group have also made it very clear that being a vegetarian is not just about eating salads.

Chocolate Tart

Ingredients

450g/1lb sweet pastry

1x20cm/8in tart ring

300g/10½oz dark chocolate

110g/4oz unsalted butter

110ml/4fl oz double cream

4 eggs

1 egg, yolk only

110g/4oz sugar

Preparation method

1. Line the tart ring with sweet pastry and bake blind.
2. Melt the chocolate, butter and cream in a bowl over boiling water.
   Technique: Melting chocolate 
3. In a mixer, whisk the eggs, yolk and sugar on full speed until thick, light and fluffy.
4. Fold the eggs through the melted chocolate mix very carefully and fill the tart mould to the top.
5. Cook in a cool oven at 150C/300F/Gas 2 for 10 minutes. Allow to cool completely. 
6. Do not refrigerate. Serve with orange or passion fruit sorbet.

Vegetarian Penne Pasta with Tomato and Red Capsicum Sauce

Penne pasta

2 tsp olive oil

1 chopped onions

2 crushed cloves of garlic

2 red capsicums cut into small pieces.

1 tin crushed tomatoes

salt and pepper to taste.

Cook pasta as per instructions on the packet.

In pan heat oil and saute onions until transparent.

Add garlic and cook for further 2 minutes (without burning)

Add tinned tomatoes and capsicum pieces.

Cook until capsicum is soft and liquid has reduced.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Drain pasta and toss through tomato and capsicum sauce.

Serve with fresh salad.

Chinese Dumplings 

Ingredients

60 premade dumpling wappers

300g Pork Mince

2 spring  onions

2 cloves garlic

1 bunch Ong choy (Chinese water spinach)

2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine

2 tbsp soy sauce

Small amount sesame oil

2 tbsp oyster sauce.

Finely chop spring onions and ong choy.

Mix with Pork mince.

Add sauces and mix until totally combined.

Take small amount of mixture and place in centre of dumpling wrapper.

Fold and set aside for cooking

Follow this Link for instructions on how to fold dumplings

http://www.steamykitchen.com/5849-chinese-boiled-pork-dumplings.html

Preheat electric frypan or saucepan full of water.  When boiling add dumplings.  

Dumplings will float when cooked.

Serve with Chinese red vinegar.

Ready Steady Cook!

Today
Each team had a different dish to cook, they were given a recipe and some instructions and they were off.

Group 1 - Chinese Dumplings

Group 2 - Vegetarian Penne Pasta with a tomato and red capsicum sauce

Group 3 - Chocolate Tart


The results were awesome.  Group 1 winning todays cook off, the boys were super organised, and worked well as a team.  A special well done to Luke who took leadership seriously and shared the skills he has learnt cooking at home with his mum with the group.

We thought we should include the recipes on our blog so that we can cook them another time, or at home for our friends and family.

Getting Organised

Our first cooking club session was all about getting organised.
What are we going to do? How are the sessions going to run?

Some of us obviously watch a few of the current cooking shows, and we decided that we would like to run our sessions a little bit along the lines of 'My Kitchen Rules'

We have split into groups and each group with cook a different dish each week.  We will cook and entree, a main and a dessert.  At the end of each session we will sit down and taste each others dishes and give feedback to each other.  Mrs Hanlon and her helpers will also be looking at, and tasting the food and choosing the best dish of the day.
They will be looking at group dynamics - how the group can work together and how organised the group is. The taste of the food, and where time allows, how the food is presented.

Next week we are going to be making Chinese Dumplings, Vegetarian Pasta and Chocolate Tart!

Food technology is focused on developing knowledge and skills about the use of living organisms and ingredients to process, preserve, pack and store products.

In home economics, students develop an understanding of the factors that influence the well-being of individuals and families within the home and community and of the actions people take to enhance and sustain those environments.

In the context of food and nutrition, students evaluate current issues and theories of nutrition, identify and reflect on factors that influence people’s choices and behaviours, and use this knowledge to make informed decisions.

Through the processes of selecting, preparing, cooking, and serving food, students develop their creativity and experience a sense of accomplishment. At the same time, they develop personal and interpersonal understandings and skills that contribute to well-being.