Make Music Day was held at the beautiful Craigmillar Castle on Thursday 21st June. Thankfully, it was a bright sunny day as the majority of the event was to take place outdoors (and the Scottish summer has been dubious at best so far!)
In the build-up to the event, we worked with Castlebrae High School to teach them how to cater an event. A group of 12 students were our team of cooks this time, so there were plenty of hands to help. We were told to expect anywhere from 60-100 people at the event, so whilst we had a good number of young chefs, there was much to get done.
Task one: deciding the menu for the day
Our typical method is to use as many of the ingredients we have in that week from our local suppliers and partners. We also want the young people to be involved in planning the menu so, a few weeks ahead of the event, we went through the school to talk it all through and get some menu ideas down. The young chefs wanted to do something Indian or Mexican, and something chicken-related.
We put our heads together and came up with a few delicious dishes; chicken and chorizo chilli, a vegan black bean chilli, and lentil dahl (vegan also). Of course, we needed some side dishes to accompany these; tortillas, ‘pea’camole (think guacamole but using peas instead of avocados), slaw, tomato salsa, and then curried flatbreads and pickled chillis for the dahl. It’s fair to say the young chefs were grossed out and objected to the concept of peas in guacamole at first… however, we were delighted that after tasting the final product they all agreed it was “delicious” and just as good as avocado-based guac [but much cheaper and using local produce – win].
Task two: prepping for the big day
Throughout the prep, it was funny to observe the group of 12 girls begin to compete with each other about who could become the best or the favourite chef. But ultimately, this was great and all in good jest. It meant they worked hard and passionately which always shows in the final product.
A classic comment from one of the young chefs was “eww, I hate tomatoes” whilst refusing to help make the tomato salsa. But credit to her, she tried it once it was made, and said she was wrong and actually loved the taste.
Task three: the final prep, packing up & serving the food.
Our young Chefs arrived at our kitchen bright and early and, after a couple of hours of working very hard doing the final bits of prep, we packed up and headed up to Craigmillar Castle to set up the food station.
The beating of pipe band drums and the harmony of bagpipes began to fill the air as the event got underway. A highlight for sure was the Castlebrae school orchestra playing “Tequilla”.
It didn’t take long for queues to form at our food stall. The young people were all excellent at serving – they had memorized all the dishes, how they were made, the ingredients, and were so passionate about describing what was on offer. You could see they were proud of what they achieved – and so they should be!
So many of the guests came back to the stall to tell us how delicious the food was and how impressed they were. Some lucky folks came back and had seconds, some sneaky ones even got thirds… The feedback was so positive that at a separate event, more than a week later a lady approached our station to share the fact that she thought the food was “exceptional”. She even said she saw one of the kids around Craigmillar a few days after the event and went over to say to her how well they’d done and how good the food was.
Overall the day was a roaring success, the team of chefs were wonderful and worked so hard to pull off an ambitious menu. It’s no easy job to cater for 80 people but yet these young people took it in their stride.
Read more about Make Music Day 2024 in the Edinburgh Evening News.
