Let's talk about the sights, smells, and tastes that take us right back to the dinner hall.
It's back to school this week for so many of our young people. In my role as Chef ambassador for Cheshire College South and West, I'll be going in to talk to our new cohort of learners. It's an exciting but challenging few weeks for the College and of course the learners as they embark on the next chapter of their lives.
In the same way, many will be starting new high schools, new primary schools and even going to school for the first time and of course this got me thinking about food and school dinners! I think I was lucky, I remember food being cooked and enticing smells coming from the kitchen and being prepared by school cooks who genuinely cared about putting something nice in front of you.
It got me wondering what were your school food memories? My two primary schools were very different, the first one I went to, we had older children as servers at the head of the table. Whilst the food would be marked out in portions by the cooks, the servers would plate up from hot aluminium containers, imagine the risk assessments to do that today!
In that school that I went to it would have been called dinner, not lunch and I always remember that in the afternoon we would often do PE in that hall, sometimes you'd get a bit of mashed potato or the occasional pea squashed into your pumps!
Again, in the 1970s we didn't have trainers, we had black standard issue pumps. So, what about the food? Well decent shepherd’s pies for one with real mash on top, probably liver and onions because we needed the iron. Fresh vegetables and spuds but maybe the odd bag of frozen mixed vegetables was creeping in. I remember the thick crockery, Duralex glasses with numbers on the bottom and battered aluminium jugs filled with water.
In the second year of juniors, I switched schools and felt like I'd been transported to a different Galaxy. No servers, no crockery just plastic plates of food dropped in front of you. Now don't get me wrong this was still good food just a different way of eating, it felt individual, not communal, not so much of a shared experience. At my new school, my aspirations of becoming an important server at the head of the table were shattered, servers didn’t exist!
I think at this school the puddings stuck with me, jam Roly Poly and custard, spotted Dick always an amusing title for a nine-year-old boy and I watched its name change over the years to spotted dog and even Dalmatian pudding.
The one that sticks with me though is that jam sponge and pink custard you know it was a sponge spread with red jam and then had desiccated coconut sprinkled over the top. But that pink custard, what even was that meant to be? It had such an artificial, chemical after taste and it messed with my head for years, working out whether I was supposed to enjoy it or not. I also remember the headmaster intercepting a few Christmas puddings as they were being served and putting in a silver 5p. You just couldn't do that these days for fear of a child swallowing the coin!
Eventually came the high school years and the introduction of a blazer, which was basically a vessel that you could lob your chocolate brick, flapjacks and even cornflake cakes into. That way you could get your spam fritters and beans down you quickly, chuck your pudding in your pocket and get back out to play football!
Years later when I started my business I was asked to work with Sure Start to help introduce real food back into some schools. They said to me ‘Bri, I walk into that school at five to twelve and smell nothing, nothing inviting and no anticipation of eating together’
The cooks showed me the horrible ultra processed bags of garbage they were meant to serve and said to me we want to cook we want to make nice food, I can still remember the looks in their eyes. They were so sad.
The schools were in Liverpool, and I remember working with the cooks on one of the days we made muffin pizzas, but we made the tomato sauce and blended loads of fresh vegetables into it, so the kids didn't know! I also made Scouse that day and as the experienced professional chef that I was... I put so much work and love into that pan of stew; it was perfect even if I say so myself!!
The army of kids attacked the counter, wave after wave of hungry faces and at best it was probably 70:30 in favour of the pizza offer, I was gutted but at least they got some sneaky veg into them!