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.