The Create and Cook Competition

The Create & Cook Competition is taking a break for 2022.........

This is to give schools a chance to get back to normal. With schools and food tech teachers under enormous pressure this academic year, we have decided to take a break for 2022. We know how hard it was for teachers last year to run the competition in school with the extra work involved in exams etc and hope we can all return with renewed enthusiasm once the pandemic is over.

Meanwhile we do hope schools will continue to explore their local ingredients in the classroom. Teaching young cooks the links between what they buy, cook and eat and climate change is so important. Never before, with COP26 around the corner, has it been more important for us to understand how our food systems impact the planet. Learning about food miles, animal welfare and how our food is produced is vital if we are to make decisions that have the least impact on CO2 emissions and climate change.

Please do use our worksheets on the teachers pages of our wenbsite to explore some of these issues in the classroom. Hope to be back soon to help schools celebrate local food and nurture young talent. www.createandcook.co.uk

Home - Create & Cook Competition The Create & Cook Competition is a fun project for schools focusing on local food. The competition is open to 12-14 year olds (years 8 and 9) in secondary schools in Hampshire, Sussex, Isle of Wight, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Shropshire. The brief is to work in pairs and create a two course m...

Congratulations to Tommy and Poppy Fernhill School Farnborough Hampshire for winning our Southern final sponsored by Natures Way Foods. We loved their Isle of Wight crab, sweetcorn and courgette fritters served with a watercress salad and spiced yogurt. The judges were also impressed with the young cooks Newlyns Farm Shop, Café & Cookery School medley of pork served with asparagus, broad beans and a Bramley apple sauce. Great use of local seasonal food Hampshire Fare

Finding refuge in the kitchen, Poppy and Tommy told us they find cooking very relaxing and rewarding. It’s good to shine a light on the less academic subjects sometimes. Cooking has certainly helped a lot of people de stress and relax over the past 18 months which we think is brilliant.

We are also delighted to read that in the National Food Strategy, part 2 published today, schools are being urged to take Food and Nutrition as seriously as English and Maths. We have some brilliant food teachers like Rob Strachan at Fernhill School who need all the support and encouragement they can get to keep doing their great job. Keep food firmly on the curriculum please.....

CONGRATULATIONS to Poppy and Alina from St Helen and St Katharine in Abingdon Oxfordshire for winning our Midcounties final sponsored by The Midcounties Co-operative Best of our Counties.
Poppy and Alina sourced a great selection of local ingredients for their Norton & Yarrow Cheese Ltd Brightwell Ash goats' cheese and spinach ravioli using Matthews Cotswold Flour with a herb and chilli oil plus homegrown rhubarb and raspberry crumble with Cotteswold Dairy milk and local eggs for their creme anglaise sauce. It was Poppy and Alina's extra touches and attention to detail that won them the title. Well done girls for championing your local ingredients helping reduce food miles and help towards reducing climate change.

We're busy judging all the great entries to our 2021 competition this week. We're loving this one from Liam and Joe Brookfield Community School. Lovely colourful smoked trout salad with strawberries, tomatoes, oranges, rocket and a berry sauce. Trout - smoked and fresh from the chalk streams of Hampshire and the ancient fish farms of the Cotswolds, has been a popular ingredient this year. Great to see more fish on the menus! Thanks boys for your great entry.

A big thank you to all the young cooks and food teachers who have sent in entries to the Create & Cook Competition. Who will win the trophy this year?

We've had some lovely menus focusing on local food and will choose the best to go through to our finals. We really hope we can hold a Southern and Midcounties final after the 21st June. We're so looking forward to meeting some new rising culinary stars and tasting their dishes. We'll announce the finalists shortly..........

From the Isle of Wight, we met great young cook Emily who with her cooking partner Ellie won our 2017 final. Emily is an instinctive cook who showed great skill in the kitchen with her homemade pasta dish.
The judges were so impressed that nearly every ingredient in Emily’s dish was from the Isle of Wight including Calbourne Water Mill Flour and Brownrigg's Farm Shop and Cafe eggs for her homemade tagliatelle. Emily created a delicious Island sauce too using The Garlic Farm garlic, Brownrigg's Farm Shop and Cafe chicken and bacon, Briddlesford Lodge Farm Shop cream, Gallybagger cheese and Rosemary vineyard wine.
Finishing off the dish with homemade pesto and green and purple basil made this winning pasta dish extra special. With so many fantastic ingredients to show off, the Isle of Wight has produced some amazing young cooks for our competition over the years – what a treat we’ve had tasting all their dishes! For Emily’s recipe www.createandcook.co.uk/recipes

Callum from Gloucester is the young chef we’d like to celebrate this week. Callum created a scrumptious “Old Spot Cheese Pie” that the judges loved …

Callum with his cooking partner Henry wanted to use famous ingredients from Gloucester and chose Gloucester Old Spot pork and Double Gloucester cheese. Callum cooked a proper old- fashioned pie with delicious homemade shortcrust pastry with Shipton Mill flour and a filling of pork, cheese, carrot, leek, potato and herbs. Callum was inspired by the traditional cheese rolling at Coopers Hill where “people chase Double Gloucester cheese down a very steep hill”. He also wanted to use pork from Gloucester Old Spot pigs who are famous for being “the oldest spotted pig breed in the world”.

The judges loved the robust flavour of the pie and appreciated the use of veg to make the pork pie slightly healthier His pastry was really light and well -cooked and the salad and chive flowers added seasonal colour to this hearty dish.

In our series celebrating young cooks, we’d like to introduce Naomi from Andover. Naomi created a delicious burger made from Hampshire pork, sage and apple ….

Naomi and her cooking partner Beth used Greenfield Farm Shop - Greenfield Pork Products as a starting point for her burger. The girls regularly drive past the free- range pigs in their fields. The judges were impressed with Naomi’s knowledge of how the pork was produced. They also liked the girls pairing of pork, apple and sage which produced a really tasty, moist burger which melted in the mouth. The little extras of homemade caramelised onions and Hampshire watercress showed the girls had researched a range of ingredients to serve with their burger and had gone the extra mile to add more skill.

Burgers don’t have to made from beef – you can make a pattie from pork, chicken, lamb, crab, beetroot, chickpeas and wrap it in a bun! See our recipe page for burger and bun recipes www.createandcook.co.uk/recipes

As we head towards the Easter Holidays, we’re starting a new series celebrating our talented young chefs ….

We’re going to share some of the recipes of past finalists and tell you why we liked their entry. This should help those working on this year’s competition. Please see our website recipe page for full recipe cards.

As it’s Easter and the end of Lent, we thought a chocolate recipe would go down well. So first up for Easter is young talented chef Emily from Chichester with her chilli and chocolate tart. Using Montezuma's Chocolates as a starting point, Emily found local wholemeal flour from the Weald and Downland Museum as well as local cream from Goodwood Estate Farm and local eggs. Emily loves exploring new flavours which is why she wanted to try the ancient Aztec combination of chilli and chocolate.

The judges praised Emily for her bold choice and were impressed with the range of skills involved in the dish – wholemeal pastry, chocolate filling and ice cream. The dish was also beautifully presented. We hope to discover more passionate young cooks like Emily this year – closing date for the 2021 Create & Cook Competition is now Friday 14th May.