School where Ottolenghi chef serves spinach muffins

IT sounds more like the menu at a trendy restaurant than the typical offerings of a school canteen.

But sweet potato and spinach dahl muffin cakes with celeriac and parsnip will soon be served for lunch at an inner-city primary – thanks to a chef who left her job at a top restaurant to cook there.

Nicole Pisani, 34, was head chef at Nopi, the fashionable Soho eatery set up by celebrity chef Yotam Ottolenghi, where mains such as twice-cooked baby chicken and tea-smoked lamb cutlet cost more than £20. Now she will be cooking for 500 pupils at Gayhurst Com- munity School in Hackney, east London – on a budget of just 92p per child.

Miss Pisani said she will try to stick to dishes that are familiar to Gayhurst’s pupils, but she will not give up the quality ingredients she is used to. Salmon goujons will replace fish fingers, and pizza will be out in favour of cheese and butternut squash quiche.

Louise Nichols, Gayhurst’s executive head teacher, said: ‘The kitchen staff are a bit nervous, but they will take it all on. It’s fast and furious getting 500 children fed at lunchtime.’ The Government’s School Food Plan, which came into force earlier this month, set new standards for school dinners following TV chef Jamie Oliver’s long-running campaign.

Co-founders of the healthy fast food chain Leon, Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent, wrote the review and called for head teachers to ban or discourage packed lunches.

Miss Pisani applied for the school job after seeing a tweet by Mr Dimbleby, whose son goes to Gayhurst. She told the Guardian: ‘In school kitchens the mentality is they are cooks, not chefs. But it would be really nice to have people who love cooking in schools.’