This year students within the Food and Nutrition Department have been working with the Fun Chinese Ambassadors via video link and using the charity's  educational portal which is filled with authentic Chinese recipes/knowledge about Chinese culture and amazing skilled cookery ideas. It has been part of an on-going partnership we have as a department with the National Food teachers center. 

As Enrichment week planning began we decided to have a chinese themed event across the two days. We began with Year 7 and 8 on Wednesday making Kung Pao Chicken which is a classic dish in Sichuan cuisine. We learned lots from the presentations we watched and improved our cookery skills using the school Woks. Students learned that temperature control when using a wok is very different to a frying pan and loved using them throughout the day. We made our own authentic sauce, learned about marinating and served the dish with noodles.

The highlight of day one certainly for all was the Bao buns we made. Bao buns are steamed chinese bread rolls (very complex skill/dish) to make and all students made their own Bao buns, filled it and steamed them with a super healthy fresh vegetables salad covered with a sauce of their own choice during the session.

We all extended our cutting skills learning about julienne and finely dicing vegetables during the session too. Considering we had year 7 and 8 new to making all dishes, which are complex for the year groups we were really proud of everyone. Day two was extraordinary as Mrs Waddington and Mrs Wentling planned our cake decorating activity where we made 30 chinese dragon cakes. I will leave the details for Mrs Waddington and Mrs Wentling to tell you all about. 

As a team, students and staff worked together brilliantly to organise, facilitate and participate in easily the best enrichment activities I have done as a teacher over my 25 year career so far. We all had an exhausting but fabulous two days. I am so proud of all staff who helped in any way over the two days and even more proud of the students who were amazing. How do we top that for next year? 

Kung Pou Chicken