Lone Star owner Tom Roseingrave, (left) with St Patrick’s School deputy principal Chris Day and the pupils who got to cook food inside the commercial kitchen. PHOTO/CHARLES GORDON
CHELSEA BOYLE
A hunger for healthy cooking has been stirred up in St Patrick’s School.
Its pupils have been on a healthy-eating journey that would make British chef Jamie Oliver proud.
Deputy principal Chris Day said 90 pupils had been preparing cuisines from around the world — including Italian, Indian and Thai – dishing up a meal a week over the past 10 weeks in the process.
But true to the spirit of a Masterchef competition, there was a catch — they had to make it all from scratch and learn how to budget meals themselves.
Mr Day said the first step for the pupils was learning about kitchen hygiene and safety – including how to work with knives.
“They learned what a healthy, balanced diet is,” he said.
They designed their own recipes and then crunched the numbers to find out what the meal would cost.
“They went online on Countdown and priced the ingredients – there had to be a budget.
“What’s really neat about the programme is the key message which is to think about what they eat and drink.
“With all of the health issues around food, it’s about educating them about food rather than adding to the problem.”
The programme went down well with the pupils.
“Half of them would love to be a chef.”
The finalists of the competition, who had shown real flair for cooking, were rewarded by being allowed to cook food inside the commercial kitchen at Masterton’s Lone Star restaurant.
For Kaitlyn Dawson, 11, making meals from scratch was the best part of the experience and the hamburgers were the tastiest stand out of all the dishes they had made.
“Because we knew what was in them,” she said.
Lone Star owner Tom Roseingrave said they had enjoyed having the pupils with them.
“They were really listening to what we were saying.”
Mr Day said they were very lucky to have Mr Roseingrave and his wife, Michelle, supporting the kids and that they deserved a “huge thank you”.
