A fun press shoot with Sarah and Goose
In July, we brought our signature style of communal cooking to Edinburgh Food and Folk Festival, inside the iconic Palais du Variété spiegeltent. Over the course of the weekend, more than 70 participants rolled up their sleeves for four interactive workshops. And we think they had a pretty good time!
These workshops were taster sessions, based on the cooking classes that we run in our community kitchen in Craigmillar. Each one was led by our team of chefs, and on Sunday we had a superb volunteer – M’Jay – who helped keep things running smoothly.
We used the same methods at the festival that we do in our regular classes: teaching that is rooted in action—learning by doing, tasting and asking questions. It’s always a challenge to squeeze everything we do into a 60-minute festival class, but we hope everyone left with new skills and more confidence in the kitchen. Whether emulsifying a vinaigrette in Get Saucy or balancing the delicate flavours of Cullen Skink, participants explored new techniques and built skills they could take home.
By recreating four of our most popular classes at the festival, we aimed to give people a real sense of what food education can do for them.
Across the weekend, we ran the following sessions:
- Essential Skills
- Get Saucy
- Fun with Flour
- Cullen Skink: A Taste of Scotland
Each workshop was designed to build both confidence and curiosity; whether people were learning how to hold a knife properly, balance a sauce, or make traditional Scottish soup from scratch. We packed a lot into each hour, but we always made time for questions, conversations, and the kind of informal learning from each other that happens when people cook side by side.
Sunday’s Fun with Flour session was busy, with children as young as three joining in to knead pasta dough and flip flatbreads. There were floury hands everywhere, and the tent soon became loud with shouts of kids showing off to each other, “look how good I am at kneading!” or “has this been kneaded enough?”—the word that was new to some quickly became part of everyone’s vocabulary. We found time to talk about the flour as well as playing with it, discussing the benefits of using different types of grains: spelt, rye, and heritage wheat. We explained how these flours support British farmers working towards more regenerative, resilient farming practices—they’re also healthier, and make delicious bread.
Cooking in the Spiegeltent
Throughout the class, we encouraged people to trust their instincts, notice how the dough behaved, and adjust as they went. We even slipped in a bit of gluten and starch science, because understanding the why behind food helps people feel more confident when recipes aren’t there to guide them. It’s important to us to really dig into the why when we’re teaching, because we want people to be able to cook, get creative and problem solve for themselves.
Our time in the tent was just one part of a much bigger conversation. Later in the week, we joined two more events: an elimination-style pub quiz with local legends Goose’s Quizzes, and a thought-provoking discussion with Nourish Scotland—hosted by the brilliant Sarah Rankin of MasterChef fame. Taking to the Piccolo tent stage with Sarah and the Nourish team gave us space to reflect on the public diner initiative and why it matters so much to us. Taking the conversation out of our kitchen and into that shared space allowed us to hear what you all think, too. One audience member, an NHS surgeon, told us that from his perspective, “a rise in food-related conditions like heart disease and diabetes means that poor diet is now on a par with smoking as the main cause of preventable disease.”
The quiz night was a little less serious but full of laughter—and we raised over £200 to support our community projects, so thanks to Goose’s Quizzes who made that happen! And of course our friends with big brains who won prizes on the night.
It was a great week: we left the Edinburgh Folk & Food Festival feeling inspired. Events like these have a brilliant way of sparking real conversations about food justice—which is exactly what we hope for. Thanks to everyone who came along and spent time with us, and a big thank you to Assembly for having us back for another year.
