Last month in my article about the role of the nursery chef, I mentioned Jo Ingleby, winner of the 2015 BBC Food and Farming Cook of the Year Award. Jo is the chef at Redcliffe Nursery School and Children’s Centre in Bristol where she impressed the BBC judges with her ‘experimental cookery’ sessions for the under-fives. The previous year, centre head Elizabeth Carruthers had won the Local Hero category in the same awards for the food project that she set up to encourage young children to explore and experiment with food. When I saw that Jo and her colleagues were hosting an evening event to mark the end of her reign and to showcase their exciting concept of experimental cookery, I snapped up the chance.
Redcliffe Nursery School and Children’s Centre sits in the shadow of several towering blocks of flats in what its website describes as ‘an economically deprived yet culturally rich area of inner city, Bristol’. As soon as you step inside, you realise that you have entered somewhere special, and the knowledge and passion of the staff shine out.
Jo explained that she is both a chef and an artist and began working with the centre as part of a creativity project ten years ago alongside Carole Keane, the centre’s assistant head.
The main aspect of what Redcliffe has coined ‘Experimental Cookery’ is a strong partnership between education and the food world. Ms Keane has written three research papers about the project that have been presented at the European Early Childhood Conference in Estonia and Birmingham. The Food Project, which explores food and cooking as a creative journey, continues with daily food sessions where the children experiment with food without the use of recipes.
CHILDREN’S KITCHEN
As at Snapdragons, a children’s kitchen has been built at Redcliffe with units at child height, but here they have even included an induction hob that children can cook on safely with adult support. The children’s kitchen is in the same room as the nursery kitchen where Jo cooks the lunches – so, as they experiment with fresh produce, the children must be immersed in the smells and sounds of her delicious cooking.
This does not mean that they will necessarily decide to cook anything in their sessions though. Jo explained that there is absolutely no set outcome and the sessions follow the children’s own lines of enquiry.
Usually, the produce used is fresh, seasonal vegetables, some picked from the centre’s allotment at the city farm, which is a ten-minute walk away, and some bought from local suppliers. Jo has carefully taught knife skills to the children so that they can cut safely using special plastic serrated knives. All the utensils are stored in the child-height units so that the children can access them as they wish.
In their key groups of around six, they chop, rip, taste, smell, discuss and, on occasion, as Jo joyfully explained, even flick the food they have chosen to explore. Sometimes the children may decide to cook the vegetables, but often they will happily munch them as they are or just be content to feel and smell them. This is a great way to encourage children to taste and explore healthy food without any sort of pressure being exerted on them.
Of course, this approach relies on carefully supportive practitioners who can scaffold the children’s learning without dictating the outcomes. I was interested to learn that at Redcliffe they have food apprentices who are being trained in Jo’s creative food skills alongside their more traditional childcare qualifications.
At Snapdragons Horfield we have ‘Food Ambassadors’ who take the lead in cooking and healthy eating for each age group, and this has helped to keep our healthy eating approach consistent and to guide practitioners away from the idea that children’s cooking is somehow different from ‘real’ cooking and must involve cake!
SPREADING THE NEWS
Fresh from my visit, I was interested to read a local news story about a school vegetable box scheme being run by organic supplier Riverford. The national Riverford Vegfund initiative helps schools raise money by introducing parents and teachers to weekly vegetable boxes. What spiked my interest was that our local Bath Riverford representative, Vicki Mowat, was introducing the scheme by running interactive sessions where children could learn why vegetables are such an important part of our diet and get stuck into a veg box.
During her session, the children used lots of different utensils to chop, snip, spiralise, squeeze and grate the fruit, vegetables and herbs to create their own healthy salad. I rang Vicki to investigate the scheme and told her about my visit to Redcliffe and how her sessions sounded similar. They are! Vicki knows Jo and understands all about Redcliffe’s experimental cookery project.
Redcliffe’s mission is to spread the word about this creative approach to food and cooking with young children to other settings. I certainly came away inspired.
Once you have been liberated from the idea that cooking means always following a recipe, you can see how much more joyful children’s interactions with food can be – and that must be a good thing if it establishes a healthier relationship with fresh food in our children.
Mary Llewellin is operations manager at Snapdragons. Snapdragons Keynsham has the Food For Life Partnership Gold Catering Mark, a Children’s Food Trust Award, is accredited by the Vegetarian Society and was winner of the Nursery WorldNursery Food Award in 2012 and 2014. See www.snapdragonsnursery.com
MORE INFORMATION
Redcliffe Nursery School and Children’s Centre has devised an Experimental Cookery Course for practitioners, www.redcliffechildrenscentre.co.uk/contact-us
www.bbc.co.uk/food/chefs/jo_ingleby
