At Edinburgh Food Social, our cooking sessions usually focus on practical kitchen skills: chefs demonstrate, participants follow, and together we create something delicious. But understanding how to buy, prepare and eat good, healthy food is about much more than cooking. It’s about budgeting, knowing what ingredients to buy – and where to find them – as well as having the confidence to make sense of recipes and adapt them.
The class enjoying their creations
In Scotland, literacy and food insecurity both remain pressing issues. While around 73% of Scottish high school students have internationally recognised reading and writing skills, over a quarter still struggle at times, and around 3% have very limited literacy — especially in areas of deprivation, like Craigmillar. Scottish schools report that about 26% of 11 year olds are not meeting expected literacy standards, and sadly this is often linked to where they live. The Craigmillar Literacy Trust is an organisation dedicated to improving literacy in the same place we are trying to improve food education – so when they reached out to us, it made perfect sense to come together on a project.
Together, we decided to design a class for young people that explores the world of food writing and recipe creation. The workshop invited participants to become both authors and chefs, as they created their own recipes, tested them out and refined them.
We began with books and conversation, as our chefs laid out a selection of cookbooks for the group to explore — pages were eagerly turned as we discussed the writers; the stories behind their food; their different styles of explaining recipes and techniques. We talked about how language builds meaning and how recipes can inspire creativity, as well as how important it is for chefs to have somewhere to discuss what their food means and how they want it to be enjoyed. With all this in mind, the group set to writing their own recipes.
Then it was time to swap pencils for knives. Under the guidance of our chefs, the young cooks learned safe knife skills as they experimented with tomatoes, garlic, aubergines, and herbs – creating a rich sauce that bubbled away, filling the kitchen with delightful aromas. There were experiments with spice levels as we tried to balance sweet and spicy in homemade chilli jam. As we chopped and stirred, new words were introduced, vocabulary was explained, and everybody took lots of notes. Within a short space of time, these new chefs had prepared a colourful spread and gained both culinary and literary skills to take home.
To finish, the group took the party outdoors. Families joined for a sunny picnic, complete with flatbreads, cheese, and the dishes created during the day. Each participant left with their own handmade recipe book — complete with titles, illustrations, and ideas for future culinary adventures.
This day was a valuable learning experience for everyone. The class discovered new skills, but we also had the chance to step outside our comfort zones by adding a new element to our usual style of cooking class. We rarely make time to spend looking through recipe books for inspiration, so doing it in this class was a joy, as was discussing our favourite chefs and recipes with a young group. Who knows — among our budding chefs and authors, we may just have welcomed the next Ottolenghi, Lawson, or Bourdain. What we do know is that we shared a fantastic day of creativity, learning, and delicious food.
... A few weeks after the class, we were sent this review from one of the participants – Eva, aged 11.
We were also delighted to see the Literacy Trust reflect on the event so positively, posting on their social media: ‘We loved bringing everyone together to explore literacy in such imaginative ways.’”
It’s great to get feedback like this from the people who attend our workshops and classes. If you’ve been to something and want to share some thoughts, please get in touch.
