Chef develops taste for teaching

COLIN SMITH

TUCK IN: Chef Luke McCann with student Ariana Holland, 14, with their knickerbockerglory jelly cream and chocolate desserts at the Garin College international food festival.

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Garin College and St Paul's Catholic School served up diverse dishes from 10 countries to a bustling crowd of students yesterday.

The international food fair held at Garin was the brainchild of chef Luke McCann, who is currently completing placement as a student teacher with the school.

He estimated 300 students were served by the year 7 and 10 food technology pupils, nearly all of whom sold out of food in less than an hour.

Mr McCann cooked at Nelson's Boat Shed Cafe for nearly a decade before establishing the award-winning The Bay House restaurant on the West Coast, and has also appeared on television show Ready, Steady, Cook.

He said he was ready to transfer his skills into teaching, and hoped to teach food technology fulltime at Garin after completing his training with Waikato University at the end of 2013.

"Teaching is a very important part of being a chef because you're always training people," he said.

The 14 groups of students from both schools each picked a country they were interested in, and chose a recipe to represent that country after doing their own research.

The exercise represented about 50 per cent of the term's food technology assessment for the Garin students, who had been studying international cuisine under Mr McCann. He said it made sense for the St Paul's students to also get involved as he taught them once a week, and commented on how well the younger students coped with the stressful situation.

"Today they were initially asking lots of questions and making me run around a bit, but one by one they started getting on board and showing me they could handle it."

In addition to cooking, students served and looked after their stalls wearing everything from Japanese kimonos to Gryffindor robes from Harry Potter. The costumes were supplied at a discount by Nelson's Just Costumes.

Garin's head of technology Jo Calt said international food always worked well to unite students.

She said each group had been encouraged to provide many small portions at a cheap price so students could sample as many different cuisines as possible. Dishes on offer included German marble cake, American blondies filled with lollies and Japanese rice balls.

Amy Thomson said the Indian stall's butter chicken was her favourite, while her friend Molly Hegarty preferred the British table's jammy dodger biscuits. Both year 12 Garin students thought the fair had great atmosphere.

- © Fairfax NZ News