During the Easter holidays, The Refectory Cookery School opened its doors to the children in Frome to come and cook world food flavours in a nurturing and professional environment.
Former primary school teacher and chef, David Penfold along with his wife Faye run The Refectory Cookery School from The Old Church School in Frome and are passionate about locally-sourced, healthy and nutritious food.
Faye said, “We believe that good food shouldn’t cost the earth and travel hundreds of miles to reach your plate. There is an enormous wealth of delicious food right on our doorstep in rural Somerset, and wherever possible we aim to use it in our recipes.
“We use local farms, Fair Trade products, ethically-sourced ingredients and artisan producers; supporting the local economy is hugely important to us. All the meat for the cookery sessions is free range and organic and all the vegetables, where possible, are grown locally.”
Each session is two hours long and children get to sit down at the end and share a meal together. The left overs are all packaged up to take home to mum and dad. Sessions are managed closely by Dave and Faye where children learn important chef skills; knife skills, flavour matching and palate testing ingredients.
Faye continued, “You would be absolutely amazed at the range of different foods your children will taste after handling some incredible world food ingredients. During each session the children have fun with hands-on foodie experiments and recipes and they are encouraged to explore new flavours in an educational and fun way.
“Each session encourages the students to discover the excitement that food can bring. Children get involved in the whole cooking process from reading the recipes, to weighing and measuring the ingredients. They are encouraged to taste during the cooking process so they can see for themselves how textures and flavours change once cooked. We want our children to come away inspired and ready to cook at home.
“It’s really important to us that children taste and appreciate food in exactly the way it was intended, fresh and seasonal.”
The feedback from the sessions have been positive. Local mum Topsy said, “My 12-year-old loved the cookery session this afternoon on West Indian street food. What an amazing experience for him. They all got to sit down afterwards and try it all and he even brought some home for us to try as well! Will definitely be booking again. Thank you.”
Alice Lynch said, “Our girls six and eight years-old were very focussed on the cooking throughout. They loved trying and learning about new foods and were very proud to be able to bring home something for their papa to try afterwards. Definitely a great introduction to cooking a proper meal and lovely to see them so interested in cooking something different. It was also wonderful to see them all sit round and eat together at the end.”
Faye continued, “The very best feedback we had was when we bumped into a mum in Frome and her children were shopping for the ingredients to recreate what we had cooked in class, nothing is better than that. One of our children went to sleep reading cookery books. We know we’ve done a good job then.”
The next dates available are from 31st May – 3rd June. A two-hour session costs £10. To find out more email faye@always.cooking or call 07968 587 351.