GFYC at the Venchie: Summer 2024

Over the summer school holidays, we have been working with The Venchie in Craigmillar. The Venchie is a wonderful local organisation that supports kids in Craigmillar. We have a fantastic ongoing working relationship with the team and love supporting them in any way we can. 

Naturally, with the summer holidays upon us, The Venchie would be busier than ever. We thought this would be a great opportunity to come in and run a food project over the break, coming in weekly to deliver a cookery class and serve lunch to all the kids. The kids are aged from 8 to 13 and are therefore at a curious stage of their development and their food exploration. Many of them are still very fussy, but some are very explorative and will try lots of different things – tough to get the right balance. Ideally, we try to push them to try new things, but also want to avoid as many “yucks” as possible.

Young people with their home-made lunch!

With finding the balance in mind, we decided the first class should be fun and approachable, and hopefully, the food would be somewhat familiar to them. We did a pasta sauce-making class; a chicken chorizo and tomato sauce, and a cheese sauce. The first “yuck” of the day came when preparing the chicken – in the kids’ defence, raw chicken isn’t the most appetising thing. Thankfully, this “yuck” was quickly turned into an “OMG that’s the nicest thing I’ve ever eaten” when they tried the chicken that had been roasted until crisp in the oven. A flurry of other kids came rushing in to sample the chicken, and before long I had to make it clear no more was for tasting otherwise our lunch would be short of chicken. And of course, the cheese sauce was equally as popular. 

An interesting observation from week one was that a lot of the kids are just simply unwilling to try something if they don’t know what it is. Even the chicken and chorizo sauce was a no-go for a lot of the kids. The cheese sauce was popular, but actually, plain pasta was the most popular. It was clear to see that the fussiness of the kids is strongly driven by fear of the unknown. If something isn’t the exact way they’re used to, they’ll often say no. 

Week two offered a good opportunity to push the boat out and test the boundaries of the kids. We decided to make a variety of tarts for the kids to try. This would teach them how to work with pastry, roasting of various vegetables, but also making tart fillings. We made a three cheese tart (no surprise this was the favourite), a roasted tomato tart (which some of the kids tried, whilst others looked at it in horror), and finally a roasted mixed veg tart (which sadly nearly all the kids were unwilling to try). 

With this, we learned that we had gone beyond the boundaries of approachable food with these young people. It was worth a try, but we needed to scale back into the safety zone to avoid any future wide-eyed looks of disdain. On a positive note, the kids involved in making the tarts excelled this week. They had real confidence in their knife skills, showed good intuition when seasoning the various veg, and decorated the tarts artistically.

To make the next lesson more approachable we showed them how to make homemade chicken nuggets and chicken tenders with salad and homemade wedges. We thought this would get our community chef back in favour, but also teach a valuable lesson on how to make these in a much healthier way versus store-bought frozen, or worse, take-away fried chicken/chips. 

Happy cooks and eaters at the Venchie

The same “yuck” struck the kitchen early when one of the first jobs was to blitz up some chicken thighs into a farce. However, we got passed it, and before you know it there was a production line in place. One person making the nugget shapes, the next dredging in seasoned flour, the next coating in egg mixture, the final person covering in breadcrumbs; the first real sign of teamwork coming to fruition. Oven-baked and crispy, the kids were delighted with the result and quickly ran to brag to their friends. Success!

Over the final couple of weeks, the young people had got in the groove of things. The small things had cemented in them (washing your hands regularly, getting your apron on properly before starting, knife handling skills, etc). It was great to see the impact our classes were having. 

We baked a cake with them all in the final week as they had been begging to do this since the beginning. This was a great opportunity to show them a healthier option in the form of an orange and blueberry cake. Admittedly they would “have much-preferred chocolate cake”, but they were all pleasantly surprised by this fruity light cake. 

We alway love working with the Venchie and their young people. Yes, working with younger children presents some unique challenges. However, it also provides equally unique rewards. This is a great chance for us as a team of chefs to plant a seed in their minds, to encourage better and healthier eating habits, whilst trying to generally instill a sense of interest and care about the food they consume. We do believe this works with young people and hope to do this again with the Venchie soon.