The shiny clean, well-equipped kitchen is a hive of activity. Saucepans are
bubbling with farm-fresh vegetables, golden chicken breasts sit ready to be
sliced, a bunch of herbs from the old trough outside the back door is being
finely chopped and chocolatey aroma wafts from a briefly opened oven door.
Timers buzz and James Blunt croons in the background. Eight freshers-to-be,
feeling a blend of stress and excitement, are applying the finishing touches
to a three-course meal. The scene is not what you’d expect of a student
kitchen.
Although Jamie Oliver hasn’t yet graduated to campaigning on campus, awareness
about healthy eating, like student debt, is rising. One contribution to this
is an intensive five-day Off to University cookery course at the Orchards
School of Cookery, near Evesham, in Worcestershire. The course aims to
prepare young people moving away from home for the first time in the basics
of eating well on a shoestring.
In the homely kitchen of a rambling Georgian farmhouse, sisters Isabel and
Lucy Bomford pass on tips (Lucy has worked at the Georges restaurant in the
Pompidou Centre in Paris) to eight fresh-faced rookie cooks. For example,
how to fill out shepherd’s pie with baked beans, carve meat finely to make
it go further, and add the “wow factor” with presentation. “With more mums
out at work fewer children grow up seeing food prepared at home. Some don’t
even know what carbohydrate or protein is,” says Lucy. “The course gives
students the confidence to make decisions in the kitchen.”
Harriet Churchward has finished her first year reading English at Birmingham
University, where she lived in catered halls that served largely uninspired
meals frazzled under heat lamps for hours.
In the autumn, when she moves in to a shared house with five other girls, she
wants to be able to cook decent food for friends. “It’s pretty pathetic
being 20 and not able to cook,” says Churchward. “At home I was always given
the menial jobs in the kitchen, occasionally being promoted to chopping. I
was clueless about how seasonal vegetables can be cheaper and better for
you. The course has taught me the importance of timing and to be more
patient. Cooking for yourself boosts your enjoyment of eating.”
Although Orchards is a far cry from Hell’s Kitchen, Lucy puts the
students through their paces. And the pressure and timing required for a
three-course meal (cream of broccoli soup; shepherd’s pie with cauliflower
mash; and French pear-pie pudding) is challenging for the virgin chefs who
work in pairs against the clock. As a result there’s no shortage of typical
teenage eye-rolling and sighing.
By the end of each day, though, when nachos, canapés and wine are served,
there’s a shared feeling of achievement. When we sit down to supper, Lucy
quizzes the students about each dish: “Cauliflower mash is good for people
on which diet?” Answer: “Atkins”. Then the conversation returns swiftly to
the world’s “fittest” men and women.
When Nicola Baird completed the first Off to University course last year she
had just left boarding school and was taking a gap year before heading to
Bristol University in October to read English. At school she fuelled herself
through the exam season on Marks & Spencer’s ready-made microwaveable
meals, refusing to admit that they contained added sugars, salts and other
nasties: “I didn’t really know how to cook and was drastically short of
time,” says Baird. Like many people sharing kitchens at university, the
novelty of “cooking” in the sixth-form kitchen soon wore off: “The course
was a good introduction to fairly simple, great-tasting food. Stir fry, for
example, gives you a quick healthy meal. I also learnt how to budget, shop
for bargains and use kitchen utensils that I found previously intimidating.
I cook for my family all the time now.”
Another Orchards’ graduate, Charlie Hewlett, 18, will arrive at Oxford in
October to read theology and philosophy with a set of recipes and very sharp
knives. Lucy’s first class on the course teaches students to be safe, fast,
efficient choppers and they receive a set of Victorinox knives to keep.
Before the course, Hewlett knew just the bare bones about cooking. He
describes the food at his old school, Eton, where cookery is pursued
informally only by a handful of final-year pupils, as stodgy without many
fresh ingredients. The course opens a new world for him, one beyond the
microwave and toaster: “The presentation is a bit fussy but it’s interesting
to learn how to make tasty, rather than bland, vegetables. And by making
meals from scratch you see and control how much fat and salt goes into
them,” he says.
He adds: “I hadn’t realised how risky raw meat is and would probably have
poisoned myself in the first term. Most important, we are taught that being
able to cook well is a ‘weapon of mass seduction’.” According to Fiona
Beckett, the author of Beyond Baked Beans, a guide to student food,
knowing how to cook Mediterranean-vegetable couscous, chicken stuffed with
spinach and goat’s cheese, and mascarpone and fresh lime cheesecake made
with crushed Hobnobs — on a budget of about £5 per day — will probably work
wonders for Hewlett’s love life: “It helps you make friends — people like
hanging out with people who cook well. And it helps you pull,” she says.
Lucy agrees: “Four days ago, some of these students weren’t sure how to cook
an omelette. Now they’re turning out French chocolate puddings that’ll turn
heads in a college kitchen.”
Orchards School of Cookery, 01789 490259; www.orchardscookery.co.uk
CONCERN ON CAMPUS
On some campuses, the drive for healthy living has even threatened
the traditional bastion of “pulling” — the student bar.
Aston University has replaced one of its
boozy bars with an all-day juice and noodle bar.
The University of Westminster has set up alcohol-free zones
in its two bars; while the University of Wales, Bangor, sources all meat
from a local butcher.
Eating well now ranks high in student priorities. “Grab and
go food is still popular but we are bringing in more low-fat, low-salt, and
grilled rather than fried options — a bit like McDonald’s,” says Nikki
Copeman, the marketing projects manager at NUS Services.
At Trinity College Dublin, Dr David Thomas, runs an awareness
programme. He aims to shift the cultural balance from booze and sex to
healthy eating and exercise.
COURSES FOR ROOKIE COOKS
The Gables School of Cookery, Pipers Lodge, Bristol Road,
Falfield, Glos, 01454 260444, www.thegablesschoolofcookery.com.
The School of Cookery, 40b Wincombe Businesss Park,
Shaftsbury, Dorset, 01747 854800, www.theschoolofcookery.com
TIPS FOR PARENTS
Share a few healthy, non-microwaveable recipes with your departing
charge, see recipes for freshers at www.beyondbakedbeans.com.
Visit a supermarket together and impart some basic budgeting
skills.
Resist the urge to send “comfort hampers”:
culinary, and fiscal, skills have always been learnt the hard way.
Send them off with store-cupboard basics: pasta, rice,
couscous, olive oil, vinegar, mustard, soy sauce, mixed spices, vegetable
stock-cubes, tinned tomatoes, a jar of honey, and canned fish, beans and
pulses.
TIPS FOR FRESHERS
Keep a lemon, fresh herbs, plain yoghurt, a chunk of parmesan-style
cheese and free-range eggs in the fridge.
Eat five portions of fruit and veg a day (seasonal produce
from a local street market is cheap and saves food miles); and some lean
protein — fish, meat, pulses.
When cooking stews and pasta sauces, make extra portions and
freeze them.
Breakfast is vital — include some protein such as an egg,
wholegrain cereals, some low-fat dairy.
Maintaining hydration is vital to stay alert — take a bottle
of filtered plain water to lectures and aim to drink 1.5 to 2 litres daily.
After a night out at the student union a few alcohol-free
days lighten the load on the liver.
Oily fish, nuts and seeds are good sources of the essential
fatty acids (EFAs) omega-3 and omega-6, which mitigate depression and boost
brains. A salmon steak with potatoes, broccoli and a poached egg is a cheap
supper rich in EFAs.
