Kitchen Garden

Year 5/6 Cooking Sessions

On Tuesday 6th August and Wednesday 7th August, students in Years 5/6 were back in our Kitchen Garden Classroom cooking! Our menu was cauliflower tacos with roasted tomato salsa, accompanied with an avocado dip and fresh mixed herb and cabbage coleslaw. Students worked in groups and made different components of the tacos, in order to create a mouthwatering result! When all the flavors from our roasted cauliflower, smooth garlicky salsa, freshly smashed avocado and coleslaw came together along with a final squeeze of our Tahitian lime juice before being wrapped in warm, crisp tortillas – it was truly delicious. The flavors did surprise a few students, who normally might not be too keen on cauliflower as their ‘hero’ vegetable, as they put it.

One of the other vegetables we are currently growing in our garden is beetroot. This amazingly coloured vegetable is so versatile, that we decided to once again tweak our original Chatham muffin recipe by substituting grated beetroot and cacao in to create our very own beetroot and chocolate muffins. Each batch of muffins had 1 ½ cups of freshly grated beetroot, adding some awesome goodness to a normally sweet treat. The muffins turned out moist and fudgy, and definitely worth a try at home! Our recipes for this week’s cooking experiences are attached to this newsletter and I look forward to your feedback and hearing if ‘Taco Tuesday’ becomes a favorite tradition in your household!

Cauliflower Tacos with Roasted Tomato Salsa

Ingredients

10 mini-tortillas

Roasted Cauliflower

1 cauliflower, cut into small florets

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 teaspoon of ground cumin

1 teaspoon of paprika

1 teaspoon of dried oregano

Tomato Salsa

200gm of cherry tomatoes

1 white onion, peeled and roughly chopped

2 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced

Smashed Avocado

1 avocado, stoned and peeled

Juice of ½ a lime

Cabbage Coleslaw

¼ piece, shredded white cabbage

¼ piece, shredded red cabbage

One handful of fresh coriander, chopped

4 spring onions, finely chopped

Method

Step 1

Preheat oven to 200 degrees.
Line a baking tray with baking paper.
Place cauliflower on tray and drizzle with olive oil.
Sprinkle with cumin, paprika and the dried oregano.
Toss all to mix well.
Place in the oven for approximately 20 minutes, or until cauliflower is slightly charred.

Step 2

Line a baking tray will baking paper.
Place tomatoes, chopped onion and sliced garlic on the tray.
Drizzle with olive oil.
Place in oven for approximately 20 minutes, or until the tomatoes have begun to blister.
Once out of the oven, cool slightly and transfer tomato mixture into a heat proof jug.
Add a squeeze of lime juice.
Using a stick blender, carefully blend until smooth.

Step 3

Place avocado into a small bowl.
Add lime juice.
Using a fork, mash the avocado until smooth.

Step 4

Place the shredded red cabbage, white cabbage, chopped spring onions and chopped coriander in a bowl.
Toss all together.

Step 5

Cook the tortillas in batches for 20 seconds on each side, on a hot dry pan.
Transfer onto a clean tea towel to keep warm.
Assemble tortillas – First, spread the smashed avocado, then top with cauliflower florets, following this drizzle with tomato salsa and finally top with the fresh coleslaw.

Beetroot and Chocolate Muffins

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups of self-raising flour

1 cup of caster sugar

2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1/2 cup of cacao powder

1 ½ cups of peeled, coarsely grated beetroot

1 ½ cups of milk

2 eggs

1 ½ cups of vegetable oil

Method

In a bowl, mix grated beetroot, cinnamon and sugar.
Mix flour and cacao powder into the mixture.
Place milk, eggs and oil in a separate bowl and mix well.
Make a well in the dry ingredients, then pour in the wet ingredients.
Lightly mix, but do not over mix.
Settle the paper cases in the muffin tray holes.
Spoon mixture into each paper case, filling them to 2/3 full.
Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until firm to touch.

Lemon Cordial Fundraiser

On Saturday 10th August, our very enthusiastic Environment Leaders together with their families and other special friends joined me in making bottles of delicious lemon cordial. Our idea began to ‘fruit’ when I found boxes of glass bottles that were donated to our school from previous jam making sessions. To utilise this opportunity, we decided to ask for donations of lemons, as they are currently in season. Our generous community provided us with an abundance of mixed varieties of joyous lemons, fresh and bright. Our Environment Leaders worked very hard to get the job done and are hoping to sell out of our 61 bottles this week, in order to use the funds raised to fox proof our chicken coop and purchase new chickens. If you have purchased some cordial from our ‘pop-up’ stall on Thursday afternoon by the time you read this newsletter, we hope you loved it as much as we did when we were able to have a little taste test at the end of our busy day!

Enjoy!

Leda Semercioglu

Kitchen Garden Coordinator