Dept News: Food Nutrition

When we think about a career within the food industry most of us will immediately think - CHEF!- but there is so much more to it than that. This week our Year 9 Food Preparation and Nutrition class had their eyes opened to the world of product development. School Food Matters, in conjunction with Belazu, have set up an exciting project called Fresh Enterprise that gives students the chance to experience a career in the food industry and design their own paste or pesto. The best pastes or pestos are put forward into the final to compete with those made by students from other schools. The overall winning product is then put into production and sold to consumers online.

The students had to start literally at the drawing board. In small groups, they had to think about different flavour combinations and ingredients that would complement each other and make a flavoursome paste, which could be used as a marinade or for dipping. Once the students had their ideas written down, they were then allowed to taste some ingredients and start making their pastes using blenders and measuring spoons. There was a large variety of ingredients to choose from which included artichokes, chickpeas, sundried tomatoes, fresh herbs, preserved lemons, olives and spices - lots of choice.

The students had to make sure that they wrote down the ingredients and quantities of each one they were adding to ensure they could recreate their paste if they were the winners. After 45 minutes of product development, it was time for the pastes and marinades to be judged. Some delicious flavours were created, but in the end there were two groups who came out on top. Lewis Norton-Scott, Dominic Livingston and Aman Haria created a spicy and smooth tomato paste and Habon Khalif, Daniella Hollingsworth and Keira Rose created a sticky and sweet barbecue sauce and marinade. Both products were delicious and scored very highly. These will now go on to the next stage, a marketing & careers food workshop in which the students will learn how to market and sell their products.

Here is what Jess and Gabi from our Year 9 class had to say about the session: “The workshop was a once in a lifetime experience as we got to make our own sauce, dip or marinade, but it was harder than it seemed as we were given lots of ingredients and had to make it from scratch. The most challenging task was that we are amateur cooks and had to understand the flavour profile of everything we were mixing together, so we had to be adventurous and try vegetables and ingredients we had never heard of before.

"In conclusion, this experience was fantastic and we would recommend the school doing it again as it gave us the experience that we would not otherwise have had. We would like to thank Michaela and Gaby for coming in and the school for giving us this experience. We would do it again in a heartbeat.”

Mrs Beccan
Head of Department