Ready, steady... learn to cook! Appeal families get pop-up class

Slice of the action: Muhammad Siddique, five, and his mother Ambreen at Stanhope with Fatimah Shah, 10, and her mother Syeda

Alex Lentati

Anna Davis @_annadavis9 January 2018

Families benefiting from our Help A Hungry Child appeal have been given expert cooking tuition to help them make the most of their free food.

Children and parents from Stanhope primary school in Greenford, which receives deliveries from our partner charity The Felix Project, took part.

Fresh fruit and vegetables are handed out to families from a market stall in the school’s playground each week. The Evening Standard appeal is raising money for The Felix Project, and is aiming to pay for similar market stalls in more than 100 London schools.

Stanhope families were able to learn how to cook with the food thanks to the Kids’ Cookery School charity, which brought a “pop-up” kitchen into the school, complete with two ovens and a kitchen sink.

They were taught how to make mince pies, apple pies and pizza, using fruit and vegetables donated by The Felix Project. Kids’ Cookery School founder Fiona Hamilton-Fairley taught the class, and said most of the children had never cooked before.

The ingredients they used included peppers, spring onions, dried fruit and fresh apples. All the families went home with food and recipe cards to help them recreate their meals.

Mrs Hamilton-Fairley has seen first-hand the problem of childhood hunger through her work with the Kids’ Cookery School. She said: “I am very aware of the problem. I see it particularly during school holidays when children do not have school.”

She makes sure children are taught the basics of cooking, such as how to chop and how to crack an egg. They also learn terms such as mashing, whisking, boiling and roasting.

The Kids’ Cookery School, launched in 2000, is one of the charities The Felix Project supplies with food which would otherwise have been wasted as surplus. Its pop-up kitchen began in 2009, to address the fact that many primary schools do not have cooking facilities.

Mrs Hamilton-Fairley said: “For 20 years, schools have not been teaching children to cook. There is a generation of adults who can’t cook and live off junk food. Cooking is a huge skill and we have lost the parents’ generation but if we teach the children now they will become the next generation.”