Fun Into Food

UK Chef, Darren Tinkler, founder of Roots to Food, is currently touring schools in China to help teach students about healthy eating. Darren is a fully qualified and experienced Chef who has decades of experience in education, hospitality and nutritional management delivering effective and well respected services to schools, academies, further/higher education, and corporate sectors.

Chartwells, our catering supplier at the College, arranged for Chef Darren to spend the day with our Senior School students putting the fun back into food. His enthusiastic sessions encouraged the students to think about a healthy diet and how to make good healthy choices. The students learnt all about the different food groups and why our bodies need different types of food to be healthy.

The most exciting part of the session was when teams of students were invited onto the stage to design their own menu from a selection of ingredients. They then had to cook a meal using these ingredients in just 15 minutes. There were lots of suggestions from the audience and advice from Chef Darren to help them come up with their dishes. The Red team went for a fusion of Italian and Mexican with pesto chicken, pasta with wilted greens and a mango, tomato and onion salsa. The Green team had to come up with a vegetarian dish and went for a Caribbean inspired theme with rice and beans, vegetable curry with coconut milk and sesame seed curried potatoes. There were plenty of volunteers to taste the food and then the audience had the difficult choice of choosing the winning team. It was very close but the Green team were victorious in the end!