Public Sector Catering Unsung Hero winner ‘revolutionises’ school meals
Gone are the days of overly cooked veg, mystery meat burgers and chips with everything. They have been replaced with enticing new menus featuring regular plant-based only options and allergen free days.
All the dishes are ‘taste tested’ by young members of the school council to decide which dishes are good enough to make the menu. Examples of food on plant-based days include jackfruit jambalaya, chickpea and sweetcorn wraps, vegan pizza, as well as puddings such as coconut jelly, chocolate brownies and lime & mint cookies.
The menus are created by development chef for Waltham Forest Catering Andrea Moore. On the allergen free days, all the food on offer including chickpea tikka masala, roasted pepper risotto, peri peri chicken & coconut rice, contain none of the 14 major allergens.
Before taking up school catering in 1999, Andrea spent many years as the food hall manager at the Harrods Knightsbridge store and Selfridges in Oxford Street.
She said: “Presentation is very important for the children; we all learn to eat with our eyes. Not only that but we want even young children to get an idea of the dining experience. It’s about helping young children to develop. If you put on a display like an owl or a hedgehog, children will see it and it will get excited.
“But most of all you need to encourage the children, not force them. With the little ones, they will say ‘I don’t like it, I don’t like it’ but their tastebuds are changing all the time. And it’s amazing the power of a few stickers. Most of all, we listen to the children. They don’t just want chips every day, we need to credit them with a lot more than we do.”
The menus are already attracting a lot of attention as earlier this year Waltham Forest Catering was awarded Gold by ProVeg UK, an environmental body that campaigns for more plant-based meals on school menus.
Tanya and Nadim Ednan-Laperouse OBE, whose campaign to improve food labelling resulted in Natasha’s Law, visited a school to see an allergen free day in action.
Speaking after her visit to Thorpe Hall Primary School, Tanya said: "This is a thrilling initiative by the schools catering team at Waltham Forest which will be applauded by the hundreds of thousands of families across the UK who live in daily fear of their children suffering severe food allergic reactions."