Cookery lessons fundamental

A FEW years ago, I was invited to give a talk, at our restaurant, about how we source ingredients and my general thoughts about food. I got on my usual soapbox bemoaning the lack of cooking lessons in school and got some sympathetic nods from the 20 or so people there.

However, inviting questions as I finished, a senior educationalist asked me what, with so much pressure on teachers to fulfil the requirements of the national curriculum, I thought should be dropped from the school curriculum to make way for cooking lessons. This caught me a little bit by surprise and I had to admit that I didn’t know; not being in the business of education.

But I am in the business of food and I’d quoted a news item I’d heard on the radio about some research showing that children in Everton on Merseyside had not been eating properly and were suffering from malnutrition. The doctor being interviewed concluded that the reason was down to money being tight and there being a general lack of knowledge within parents about how to provide a good meal for their children at the right price. He suggested that the frequently proposed various nutrition information systems on food packaging might go some way to helping point parents in the right direction but didn’t sound convinced. And neither should he. For putting little coloured discs on processed food to inform purchasers whether a food’s high or low in salt, sugar or fat is hardly going to change the buying habits of someone who’s not been tutored in the basics. And it should appal all of us that there are people putting other things first before the physical wellbeing of their children. There’s absolutely no excuse for underfeeding or badly feeding our children – apart from basic ignorance.

The article wasn’t about a third world country - although I did live in Liverpool for five years and it sometimes made me wonder. This was Everton which is in one of the richest countries in the world with one of the best social systems in the world, where all the young adults having children have gone to school within the last ten or fifteen years but have come out the other side unable to provide properly for their children. Times may sometimes be hard but most people have, one way or another, a roof over their heads, clothes to wear and utility services supplied to their house. They may not be deliriously happy but they are alive. However, they have no idea how to spend very little money on cooking at home and feeding themselves and their children properly.

Now you could argue that it’s the job of parents to teach their children how to cook and, in an ideal society, you’d be right. But the parents of these current young parents went to school within the last thirty years and they weren’t taught to cook either. So if we’re expecting youngsters to be taught to cook by their parents we’re on a hiding to nothing. So, it’s got to be down to the schools and if it means at the expense of geography or history or media studies, well it really doesn’t seem to matter. Because what is more fundamental? Without food, without feeding ourselves properly, without being healthy and strong and all those things we know help us get through life, life’s quality is reduced anyway and no amount of the present national curriculum is going to extend our life or contribute to its quality as much as feeding ourselves properly could.

There are cleverer people than I who decide what should be dropped from the curriculum to make way for educating our young about food. What I do know is that it’s a fundamental decision if we want to have some positive effect on a bad diet resulting in malnutrition, rickets (now making a comeback) and, at the other end of the scale, obesity. Within five years of starting to teach our current crop of teenagers how to feed themselves and their families well and healthily, on much less than their parents are currently spending on ready meals and takeaways, we could have changed society.

So, now that children are taught a bit about cooking up to the age of 14 - the end of key stage three, and cooking is now an integral part of the school curriculum, what actually was dropped to make way for it? And, more importantly, because most teachers will have come through school in the last thirty years or so, who taught them how to teach cookery?

Sweet onion soup

This is a stunning soup, makes a substantial-enough dish for lunch or supper and, even if you make your own stock, is so easy to make. Similar but much easier to make than French onion soup, you could make it with a good bought-in stock but there’s something very satisfying about making your own if you get the chance.

Serves four

One tablespoon olive oil

50g butter

Six large red onions – peeled and sliced

One clove of garlic – peeled and crushed

Two sprigs of thyme – leaves picked off and chopped

Two sprigs of rosemary – leaves picked off and chopped

30g plain flour

One litre of beef stock

Salt and freshly-ground black pepper

Four slices of white bread – torn into lumps

100g smoked cheese – grated

In a large pan, melt the butter in the olive oil, add the onions and gently fry until they’re soft and tender - probably about 15 minutes – but be careful they don’t burn. Add the garlic and chopped herbs and gently cook for another couple of minutes before sprinkling in the flour and stirring to combine with the onions. Pour in the stock, a little at a time at first whilst stirring until all the flour is combined and the rest can be poured in without making lumps. Bring to a gentle boil and simmer for around 20 minutes before adjusting the seasoning to taste.

To serve, first, pre-heat the grill. While it’s heating, pour the soup into warmed bowls (or, for a difference, large coffee cups as we have here) making sure you get lots of the onion in each. Top each one with the lumps of bread, sprinkle on some cheese and place the bowls or cups under the grill until the cheese is melted. Warn your fellow diners to be careful because the bowls will be hot.