Jamie Oliver’s Kitchen Gardens

Children in knead

The sun spangles over a leafy courtyard as a tray baked meringue is laid proudly on a picnic table. There’s friendly, relaxed chatter among the dinner guests and an air of anticipation as pieces of the strawberry strewn dessert are divvied up and passed around. It could be a carefully choreographed scene from a Jamie Oliver garden party, which is appropriate as it’s his charity that is responsible for this happy Thursday afternoon at Orford Primary School in Suffolk.

The meringue was preceded by home-made beefburgers, sandwiched between freshly baked rolls and accompanied by an apple and broad bean salad with just the right amount of zing; all prepared by the same six children who are now sitting down to eat this summer feast. It’s not an end of term celebration, or a reward for good behaviour. Every child that attends Orford Primary has enjoyed the very same experience once every three weeks since 2009, when the Jamie Oliver Foundation decided to pilot its Kitchen Garden Project at the school.

Jamie Oliver’s involvement with food in education is well known, such was the impact of his television series that shone a light on the unpalatable state of school dinners seven years ago. But while his initial foray into the fight over British children’s eating habits felt like an intervention, his Kitchen Garden Project is altogether more organic. The national roll out is scheduled for 2014, having been piloted in four schools; from the small, rural setting in Orford to the much larger Rotherfield

Primary School in Islington. Post launch, around 23 schools are expected to join the project each year, building to a total of 232 by 2022 – the plan being to have one kitchen garden in every local authority. The lessons learned from the five year pilot will help to ensure the programme is sustainable, and while funding for new cooking facilities is being provided by the foundation, schools must match this to demonstrate their commitment.

Timing is everything

The aims of the Kitchen Garden Project are clear: to educate children about food and how it impacts on their health; to arm children with the tools they need to prepare meals from scratch and make better food choices; and to inspire children, parents and teachers to build on these foundations. None of these objectives are quick fixes. They require a cultural shift and this means making cooking and gardening a regular feature on an already bulging timetable, something that will give many schools pause for thought.

The Jamie Oliver Foundation asks that children have at least one 90 minute cooking class and one 45 minute gardening session every three weeks. When headteacher Stephen Green joined Orford Primary, staff were already one year into the pilot project and he questioned the value of giving so much time over to what might be regarded as too much of a treat, rather than a core offering. His cautious scepticism, however, was soon overcome as he witnessed the ease with which subjects such as maths and geography found a practical grounding in the kitchen, and how the garden yielded a natural source of scientific discovery.

Yes, Chef!

The Jamie Oliver Foundation employs a food specialist, Kate Kilburn, to lead the project at Orford, which works well because of the low number of pupils on roll. However, this more intimate set up isn’t practical at the much larger Rotherfield Primary School in Islington and so teachers there are being trained by the Foundation to deliver cookery sessions themselves.

While the latter approach will most likely form the blueprint for the national roll out, Kate’s food expertise is at the heart of the cooking lessons taking place at Orford, and the school is working hard to raise funds that will fund her position in the long term.

Watching Kate in action on the morning of our visit to the school, it’s easy to see her value. Once all six children have arrived in the purpose built kitchen – an enviable set up with six ovens surrounding a central island – she announces the menu of burgers, salad and meringue bake.

The first task is making the dough for the bread rolls, which leads to a discussion about yeast.
“What happens when we add yeast to water? I’m looking for a scientific word,” asks Kate.
“It dissolves.”
“What else do we need to make the yeast work?”
“Sugar!”
“And what does the yeast do to the sugar, Logan?
“It eats it up,” offers Logan.
“Yes. And what does it produce?”
“Bread?”
“No.”
“Air bubbles!”
“Yes, which we need to make
a lovely, light bread.”

The lesson continues in this vein with measuring skills combining with questions on fractions, and talk about the wider benefits of buying foods that are in season.

Many of the techniques needed to prepare the meal are familiar to the children, but a carton of eggs, donated by a parent, signal the start of a more difficult challenge: separating the yolks from the whites that will be used to make the meringue.

The eggs are, perhaps, less sanitised than the supermarket equivalent, “This one has poop on it,” observes one child, but the young chefs remain unperturbed. As they take it in turns to juggle the fragile golden orb from one piece of jagged shell to the other, an element of friendly competition emerges to see who can keep his yolk intact.

All together now

Food is inclusive. We all eat, after all, and Orford’s kitchen garden has found many friends in the community. The flour is a gift from the village baker, the farm shop down the road provides a 50% discount, and a local hotelier has started to donate money to support the programme.

A week before our visit, Orford village held a specially expanded market day to support the project. From its stall, the school sold 200 jars of its Nicey Spicy pasta sauce, which is bottled in Tiptree and bears a label designed by the children. The enthusiasm shown by parents and locals demonstrates the belief in what the school is doing and that the Kitchen Garden Project is more than a bucolic flight of fancy, but rather something that, in a world of microwave meals, it’s convenient to forget. We are what we eat.