St Edward’s College organised a highly successful “food week”, in which Junior, Middle and Senior School students made their contribution to tasty, yet healthy, cuisine in order to make their peers aware of the fact that good alternatives to fast/junk foods are readily available and easy to cook.
Dominique Inglott, head of Languages at St Edward’s, with the support of the Ambassador of France, organised the event. Her main source of inspiration was la semaine du gout (week of tasting), an annual culinary French event, now in its 18th year.
The Junior School team launched the week-long activity with a Healthy Lunch-Box competition, where 12 children, with the help of their parents, presented a pre-prepared, packed lunch-box to six judges (consisting of one parent, a teacher, a nutritionist and three boys from years five and six). The judges gave a number of points to each lunch-box according to the foods’ nutritional value, variety and practicality. Thomas Philip Debono was voted winner of the event.
Chef Privé Catering provided an array of healthy but tasty cakes for the guests to sample while Claire Spiteri, a nutritionist, gave parents an interesting talk on nutrition.
Twelve boys from the Middle School took part in the Sandwich tasting day. The boys were given the chance to experiment with a list of ingredients, including different types of bread. After being given 20 minutes to create (and name) a sandwich, the boys had to present their works to six judges, one of whom was a representative of Brown and Rye, who judged the sandwiches according to their nutritional value, practicality, innovativeness and taste. James Gatt was declared winner, although every competitor produced a mouth-watering combination of condiments.
After the competition was over, Sebastian Degiorgio, of Brown & Rye, gave a demonstration of sandwich making to students and guests. Using the bread and ingredients that the students had at hand, an array of sandwiches were produced in order to show the onlookers that different combinations of ingredients can yield myriad sensations for taste buds.
The highlight of the event was the Senior School boys’ preparation of Mediterranean cuisine, which included Maltese, Italian, French, Spanish, Tunisian, Greek and Turkish dishes. Each of the 12 boys was given the task of preparing a cooked meal particular to a Mediterranean country.
Facing the boys’ table was a table of professional chefs who had also prepared a variety of dishes from Mediterranean countries. Seeing that the chefs included Marc Besaçon (Mrs J Stubbs, Villa Tarxien), James Attard (Medina Restaurant) and Luisa Galea (Moo's Deli), the boys had to face some pretty stiff competition.
Students and chefs had the choice of presenting a starter, main course or desert. However all had to ensure that the meals were relatively easy to prepare since one aim of the event was to give the school canteen the possibility of offering the most popular dishes to the boys.
Twelve judges had the enviable task of giving points to the tastiest dish. The judges included the French Ambassador H.E. M. J.M. Rives, the Tunisian Ambassador, H.E. M. M.A. Ganzoui, Mr Peter Dacoutros, a professional chef, Mr Manuel Xuereb a professional chef, Mr Michael Chittenden, the headmaster and six students. As with the Middle School competition, the judges had to give each dish points based on originality, taste, practicality and nutritional value.
The top three chefs-to-be, Andrew Cachia, Glenn Zammit and Philip Seifert were invited by Mr Xuereb and Mr Dacoutros to appear on their TV show Aroma Kitchen.
Ms Inglott would like to thank Good Earth, Brown and Rye, Agenda Bookshop and Jon David for their support. Mark Cassar, an OE and professional photographer, was kind enough to cover the event.