We learnt about the seasonality and availability of the ingredients per recipe and discussed the nutritional values of each dish, deciding whether they are healthy dishes that could form part of a balanced diet.

For each dish, we listed the ingredients and amounts we would need and wrote down the step-by-step instructions. Then, we got busy with prepping the ingredients, cooking and, most importantly, tasting! Below, we go into detail about two of the dishes we made, but you will find the links to the other dishes at the end of the blog. You will also find pictures of how our dishes turned out!

Chicken and chickpea rice

For our first dish, we chopped and diced the shallots, carrots and chicken – or potatoes, for the vegetarian dish – and added them to our pan, which had the butter melting away. We fried the shallots for a couple of minutes, then add the chicken and carrot. We fried the veg until starting to brown, then added the cinnamon and lemon, and seasoned well. We then stired in the rice and raisins, and added the stock, bringing it to a simmer. We then added the chickpeas on top, covered with a lid and then left to cook, at a low heat, until the rice had absorbed all of the stock. We had to add a little water towards the end. Once cooked, everyone had a taste – it was delicious!!

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/chicken-chickpea-rice

Huevos Rancheros
Our second dish, Huevos Rancheros, was probably the class favourite! Here, we chopped the onions and garlic and added it to our pan. We then added the red kidney beans, cumin, 100ml of water and oregano. Once the beans had cooked and softened, we removed them from the heat, mashed them and set them aside. Meanwhile, some of us prepared and cut the tomatoes, avocados, onions, lemons, wraps and coriander for serving.

We then cracked and cooked our eggs. Once everything was ready, each of us assembled our portion onto a quarter of a tortilla wrap! We spread the beans onto the tortillas, added the tomatoes and sprinkled with cheese. We topped this with some avocado, a squeeze of lime juice, part of a fried egg, then scattered with coriander.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/huevos-rancheros

Here are the links to the other dishes we made:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/learn-to-make-pretzels

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/seafood-paella

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/chow-mein

Be prepared though if you want to try the pretzel dish at home: it took us some of the morning and all afternoon to prepare as we had to leave the dough to rise! We would also advise skipping the step with the boiling water and bicarb! The pretzels that we didn’t dip in the boiling water, seemed to work so much better!

 Click HERE to see some pictures.