Let’s Cook Together with Love

The Let’s Cook Together programme has taken on a new direction for Valentine’s Day, including some savoury specials to complement the series of sweet treats! So far the Let’s Cook Together initiative has been firmly rooted in our Quaker heritage, acknowledging the success of Quaker families such as Cadbury and Rowntree. Chocolate has been a theme through many of our Let’s Cook Together recipes including Chocolate, Cherry and Coconut traybake, Chocolate Fudge Crinkle Biscuits and Rocky Road but even the weeks when chocolate has been temporarily on the back of the ingredients shelf (possibly because we ate it all!), sweet has remained the order of the day with Fruit Cake and Griddle Scones making an appearance.

For 14th February, students were encouraged to take their Let’s Cook Together skills to the next level and produce a complete Valentine’s Day meal for their loved ones, including a savoury main course. Jennie Hatton, Food Tech teacher, once again shared on video a step-by-step guide to creating the dishes supplemented by a suite of recipe cards for those who prefer to cook from a book. Lucky diners were treated to Sweet Potato, Spinach and Chickpea curry with flatbreads followed by a scrumptious Chocolate Pudding; well, there had to be chocolate there somewhere!

The Let’s Cook Together initiative provides weekly recipes for students, staff, parents, Old Leightonians, other Quaker Schools  in the UK, local primary and prep schools and our partners at the Whitley Community Development Association, for whom we are also supplying 26 families with ingredients and equipment. The idea of engaging the community through food may be age old, but we hope that this programme has given everyone the opportunity to try  something new and develop new culinary skills during lockdown.