“Cooking is a joyous lifelong pleasure.”
– Nigel Slater
Cooking a meal is a brilliant way to bring people together and a skill that can bring a lot of joy. In collaboration with Neep & Okra and Honesty Bakehouse, we hosted a Summer Cookery School, taking place in Huntly at Square Deal over the school holidays for children aged 10+. The project was thinking about ways to encourage a new generation of young Huntly chefs, who can grow, share and spread the knowledge of ingredients, recipes and dishes around the community and further afield.
We invited kids to join us to learn kitchen skills, cook new flavours, collect fresh garden grown ingredients and play with all this new knowledge from Dawn Finch of Neep & Okra and Kate Taylor Beale of Honesty Bakehouse. Creative activities were sent out each week to build on the skills learnt in the workshops – think vegetable mask and costume making, garden comic strip designing and recipe booklet printing!
In the first week were cooking buttery shortbread and fruity smoothies with fresh herbs from the Deveron Projects Brander Garden. Herbs can be a bit of a mystery so were thinking about how to incorporate them into easy cooking.
Week two was all about celebrating picnics with cheese straws, dips and quick pickles.
The week after we were learning how to create big veggie tarts for the whole family to enjoy!
Week four brought a splendid afternoon tea themed day, with sweet strawberry buns, fruit compote and the magic of crystallising edible flowers.
To round the school off, we went back to one of life's simple pleasures; bread and butter, when recipes for soda bread and handmade herb butter was shared.
The project is supported by Huntly Community Council, YouthLink Scotland and Huntly Hairst.
