COOKOFF RECIPES
Each fortnight Spotswood College and New Plymouth Boys’ High School showcase the talents and tasty treats of their students who take food and nutrition. The subject has a focus on lifelong skills that can be used every day to enhance the benefits of a healthy diet and lifestyle. This fortnight it’s the turn of New Plymouth Boys’ High School. Written by Aaron Lock.
It’s that time of the year at school again when the boys get the white chef jackets out to start practising for the many competitions we take part in. The first one for us is the Womad cookoff held at Witt.
By the time this hits the paper the results will be known and one of the seven schools participating will be getting ready to cook their dish live on the Taste the World stage at Womad.
Normally the winner of the Womad cookoff is first up on Sunday, so if you are going to be at Womad then I urge you to get along and watch the winner cook their dish. It is inspiring to see these young kids on stage cooking and conversing with Jax Hamilton.
This competition is different from the other cooking competitions that we take part in as the focus is more on how the team will perform on the stage alongside Jax. While the appearance and taste of the dish is important and how well the dish reflects the Womad feel, the team is also judged on their ability to converse, tell a story and explain how their dish best reflects Womad.
All the teams are required to make one main and one sweet dish from the pantry list that has been shared with us. On the competition day, only one team member is allowed into the pantry to collect the team’s food and if they forget anything then they either have to move on and try to complete the dish without it or sacrifice some points from their final total.
Either way it makes winning very hard, so they need to make sure that they know their dish and the ingredients they need to cook it.
The Boys’ High team is made up of Lachie Smith, Kaea Beggs and Logan Ring who are all in Year 11. Due to the water issues that we have all faced we, like all the other schools, have had very disrupted practices.
Now I can’t speak for the other schools, but for us it has actually worked well for us. Not being able to cook has made the boys talk more about the process and who is responsible for what. So when we got into the kitchen and started cooking the boys were on fire from the get go; they were communicating very well and they produced two good looking plates of food.
Hopefully they can carry this good form into the competition and, no matter the result, they know that they have given it a good go.
Usually when cooking in class, the boys wear and apron over their school uniform, so any time that we get the boys to wear the chefs jackets you can visibly see the sense of pride in their eyes. It is no different this time around.
This sense of pride in whatever they do, cooking or other activities outside the classroom, shows they care and are highly invested in the activity and the accomplishment of it.
While winning is nice, the big picture is that you will learn more through the process than the end result. One of the key concepts of the New Zealand Curriculum is to create lifelong learners and this activity aids just that and the skills learnt from this are transferable to any activity that they put their minds to.
The important thing is to find what gives your child or children their sense of pride, which could be as simple as getting them to peel the potatoes for the evening meal or the more challenging task of giving them free reign to cook the evening meal for the family once a week
Our boys are looking at a classic New Zealand dish, Hangi and how they can re-invent it. There is not enough time and it is not practical for them to cook this in the traditional way of heating stones and cooking the food in the ground.
So we have had to come up with a way to keep the flavour and essence of Hangi. Using the manuka smoke to add the ‘‘earthiness’’ to the main dish was the key. The preboiled vegetables take the smoke flavour really well and they move the dish close to the original flavours.
The steamed pudding, while it takes a long time to cook, turns out very light and extremely tasty.
To the eventual winner of the Womad Cook Off, I will you all the best and make sure you enjoy the time up on the stage and represent your school and your dishes well.