Cooking with Pupils for the 2024 Castlebrae Prizegiving

The summer holidays are here! To mark the end of term our local high school, Castlebrae, hosted their annual end-of-year prize-giving ceremony. As we have done in the past at their concerts and other school events, we were delighted to support them by helping their students cater the event.

We were joined by a team of six final year students in the EFS kitchen who became chefs for the day to help prepare for the event. Canapes and finger food was the brief; small bite-size snacks for people to enjoy as they arrive at the event and for after. This is always a fun style of cookery as we are able to get the young people thinking about lots of different ideas, fun presentation, garnishes etc. We decided on a number of delicious finger foods; haggis pakoras and veggie pakoras with a nectarine and mango chutney, cured trout with rye crackers and herby cream cheese, mini steak bites on garlic croutons with a thousand island style sauce, tomato gazpacho, Kabuli Pulao inspired spiced chicken skewers, and beetroot brownies with mascarpone cream and hazelnuts.

The young chefs got stuck into prepping the various dishes, and before long there wasn’t a station in the kitchen free. Pakoras were being fried, trout was being cured and sliced, and the smells of fresh bread baking filled the room. This was a very passionate group, especially when it came to the tasting side of things… one student labelled himself “the human dustbin” as he was trying and eating everything he was allowed to. One of the young people tried the dill and declared it tasted like grass. Whenever this happens we are ready with a classic response… ‘Why have you eaten grass before?!’.

Once our dishes were complete it was time for the official taste test to make sure everyone was happy with what we’d made, and a chance for them to learn and memorise the dishes ahead of serving them to the attendees of the prize giving event. One of the young chefs tried the steak and garlic bread dish and with eyes rolling into his head confessed “that might be the nicest thing I’ve ever eaten”. Whilst this was great to hear, I did have to spend the rest of the session batting him away from the platter as I’m sure he would have eaten the lot if left to it. The feedback from the team was great, they were delighted with what they’d cooked and couldn’t wait to share their creations with the public. 

We packed everything up and headed up to the high school to do our final plating and garnishing of the dishes. The young people were loving life at this stage and were in full chef mode, plating beautifully and garnishing with real creativity. The day had clearly had an impact on them with one of the team saying “this is the best out of school activity” they had done. They went on to say “the food was so delicious and I’m so proud to be serving this to people”. Some of the members of the public were blown away by the level of cookery the kids had achieved and some said “this is the best food we’ve tried for a long time”; “restaurant quality” some even said. 

We really pushed this group of young people as they showed real enthusiasm on arrival and this gave us a good platform to push them to work hard and get out of their comfort zone. They took this challenge in their stride and produced some top quality dishes and really enjoyed the entire process. Their commitment was evident as they even offered to come to the kitchen after school to have some extra prep time as they wanted to do all of the additional preparation themselves. 

Once again, it was a pleasure to support Castlebrae High School and we were delighted with the incredible efforts of the young people and the overall success of the day. Castlebrae let us know that their highlight from the evening was Aaron’s – one of our young chefs –  enthusiasm for the project as he shouted “THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME DO THIS” across the Assembly Hall during the awards ceremony. We are delighted to be to able to facilitate these essential practical learning experiences, and help Castlebrae celebrate their wonderful pupils!