Children learning cooking in schools

Photo from openideo.com

I've been following the recent stories about children learning to cook in school with some interest.  It's taken me a while to unpick my thoughts because I have a few contradictory ones.

I'm all in favour of children learning how to cook - I think it's normal and natural for children to be involved in cooking.  In fact, I think cooking is in many ways a rather childish activity.  I think I partially enjoy it because of the sense of play and the ability to be messy in a socially acceptable way.  I like being able to do things with my hands, whether that's separating eggs with my fingers or shaping dough or whatever.  

Let's face it, this sort of thing is just plain fun.
Photo from www.kidspot.com.au

However, I'm not sure how I feel about children learning to cook in schools.  I'm not sure that I think that learning to cook should be done in a classroom kind of setting, I think that's almost separating it out from its natural context.  I think the way to learn to cook is to be given little tasks to do that ramp up in difficulty as you get better - when you're very little, you pod peas and peel cloves of garlic and then you progress to chopping things and then seasoning and then more advanced things like making dough and higher risk things like rotis and frying things like bhajiyas.  And I think it's important that that isn't separated out into a "now you learn to cook for an hour" but just part of your day to day life.

But, on the other hand, I get that not everyone is lucky enough to have families who cook and to learn how to cook in that kind of context and - obviously - I think they too should get to learn how to cook.  Because I think cooking is an important life skill for so many reasons - it's important for your health, it's important for your finances, it's important because it's fun and more people should have more fun.  

So, maybe, learning how to cook in school wouldn't be so bad.  But then I think about how none of the various articles that I've seen (perhaps I've missed one) on this subject have mentioned at all the cultural issues in play.  I mean, take this article from the Telegraph which describes at the end dishes that the author thinks that everyone should know how to make - a fair amount of meat in there which isn't going to work for vegetarian children, a couple of things that sound like they aren't Kosher and Indian food is all covered with "daal" and "curry"...  Now, obviously, schools in areas with large numbers of say Indian students or Muslim students or Jewish students or whatever are going to tailor that curriculum for their school but what happens when you are - as I was at one school - the only vegetarian kid in the whole school?  Do you just sit out the lessons that cover how to make a roast chicken or do you get a carrot to roast instead?  No-one seems to have thought about these issues at all.

I'm not suggesting that all these cooking classes should cover is vegetarian food as that would - of course - be a bit insane as many of the children will not be vegetarian and so will not really find that useful.  But I think it does bring home that food is so personal and so cultural that trying to teach it to a whole group of children with different backgrounds and assumptions is opening up a can of worms.  Because - at the end of the day - cooking is really quite different from other things that are taught in school.  There are so many different ways to do it and so many different ways to achieve a healthy balanced diet that, inevitably, it's going to be difficult when one way is taught.  

Now, I'm sure there are ways to get around this - teaching a wide variety of dishes from different traditions and focusing on techniques rather than straightforward recipes - but it's going to be incredibly difficult and I, perhaps overly cynically, rather doubt that many schools are going to teach anything other than "classic" British cooking plus a token nod towards chicken tikka masala or some other completely anglicised Indian dish.  I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

American food

This article on "Why do Brits love American food?" bemused me.  We do?!

Now, there's plenty of good American food - Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, for example - but, mostly, I think British people tend to think of Italian/French food as the food that they are particularly fond of.

Not least because of things like this that I spotted in the American section of the World Foods aisle at my local Tescos.

Really, America?  Why put a pumpkin in a tin?  And, if you do, please don't pretend that it's natural.  You know what is natural?  AN ACTUAL PUMPKIN.

TV chefs Vs ready meals

This article on how TV chef's recipes are more unhealthy than microwave ready meals really really annoyed me.  Running through the whole article seemed to be the assumption that, obviously, the main reason why you'd cook rather than get a ready meal is to be healthier.  What utter rubbish!  I cook rather than eat ready meals because a) my food tastes better than ready meals and b) because I actually enjoy cooking.  Really, it's not that I secretly desire ready meals but virtuously restrain myself in favour of cooking.

More recent food articles

I rather enjoyed reading Alice Hart's article in The Guardian on how to write a cookbook.  I think it's interesting the way that, as one of the commenters points out, a cookbook can't just be a cookbook anymore, you need to sell not just recipes but an idea of yourself, a way of life.  The whole thing made me realise how horribly unsuited I would be to writing a cookbook:  I criticise cookbooks all the time for lack of precision but I am exactly precise either.  There isn't much that I don't just make by eye or instinct and I tend to use cookbooks for inspiration rather than for strict recipes.

This article on child foodies, on the other hand, was just creepy.  I don't like the idea of assuming that children can't cope with adult flavours but something about these kids was just unsettling.  Kind of like those beauty pageants for small children.

Not creepy but just incoherent, this article from the Telegraph, on "why we all want to be vegievores:  the easy way to be a vegetarian" which turns out to be..  by not being a vegetarian, just eating some vegetables from time to time.  Now, obviously, I have nothing against people eating more vegetables.  But just eating some from time to time does not make you a vegetarian.  

 Random food rant: why are people so weird about cooking rice?



People seem to be so weird about cooking rice.  If I had a rice grain for every person who has told me they can't cook rice, I'd have a lot of rice.   

My steps to cooking rice (for consumption with Indian food):

1.  Buy good quality basmati rice - e.g. Tilda

2.  Put said rice in a saucepan

3.  Add some water

4.  Heat until cooked (about 15 mins but can be slightly less or slightly more depending on type or rice)

5.  Drain

    
Lots of people seem to feel that that last step is Wrong and, therefore, spend a lot of time experimenting with step 3 so that they can omit step 5 (i.e. using an amount of water such that they don't need to drain it and then complain that they have undercooked rice or burned rice. But, really, there's nothing wrong with step 5. If you think about it, why should there be? It's rice. It's not going to cook any differently in more water than in less water. It's not going to dramatically change texture by being moved from pot to colander. I sometimes accidentally get the water amount exactly right and it does not taste any different to when I drain it.

The real trick with rice, in my view, is to make sure you cook it for the correct length of time. If you're inexperienced, the best way to ensure that is to start tasting it from the 10 minute mark to make sure you don't miss the window. Once you've been doing it for a while, you can just do it by eye.