Our Year 9 GCSE Food Preparation and Nutrition students have been very fortunate to have been selected to take part in a competition organised by School Food Matters in collaboration with the fine food’s producer Belazu. The Fresh Food Enterprise project invites students to develop a cooking paste that potentially will be go into production if selected by a judging panel that will take place on 22nd April. Food industry figureheads will taste students cooking pastes and hear their pitch before deciding upon, in Marwa’s words ‘the ultimate’ paste.
So far a group of students have had a factory tour and reported back to the rest of the year group. A tasting and cooking paste making session took place over 2 mornings, with the students working with a wide range of fresh herbs, spices and condiments. Students chose their favourite after each making session; these shortlisted pastes were then judged by Mrs Akbar, Miss Culloty, Miss Mystery, Mr Viala and Mrs Jennings. The winning paste will now go forward to a marketing masterclass where students will be tasked to come up with a head turning label and a concept that could potentially get the paste into production.
I really enjoyed the Belazu workshop, especially making the Moroccan-style aubergine paste. It was fun to get hands-on with the ingredients and see how the spices came together to create such a rich flavour. The process taught me a lot about balancing tastes, and it was great working alongside everyone. Thank you for organising such an engaging and memorable session.
Hiba Year 9
Today after months of preparation and planning some people from the Belazu headquarters visited us to give us a food workshop which everyone found really fun and intriguing. To start they first gave us a plate with many different and interesting tasting samples of random foods. Then we got to taste the previous winners paste and then we got to make our own paste. The two winners now are going to the finals to see which paste is the ultimate!
Marwa Year 9
