Create & Cook Winners 2021 – Celebrating Local Produce
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Published 12 Jul 2021 in Raising Awareness
We were pleased to be able to once again sponsor the Create & Cook Competition, which is all about inspiring a passion for local produce in schoolchildren.
The competition, sponsored by Midcounties under the Best of our Counties brand, nurtures young cooking talent and celebrates local food by encouraging 12-14-year-old cooks to think about sustainability and where their food comes from.
This year’s winners were Poppy Proctor and Alina Frost from St Helen & St Katharine School in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
The girls created a flavoursome menu of Oxfordshire Brightwell Ash goats’ cheese and spinach ravioli with a homegrown rhubarb and raspberry crumble served with crème anglaise custard using Oakfield Farm eggs and Cotteswold Dairy milk.
Supporting Local Suppliers and Young People
Nicola Wildin, our Direct Sourcing Manager said, “Midcounties sponsors this competition as it’s a great example of our values in action, supporting local suppliers who are in turn helping the local economy and developing young people. With education at the heart of the competition, it gives the budding cooks the opportunity to learn from a younger age about where the food comes from and why we support local produce.”
Create & Cook winners Poppy (left) and Alina (right)
The Importance of Eating Sustainably
Min Raisman, the organiser of the Create & Cook Competition, says “It has been great to see young cooks turn to the kitchen during this difficult year. Poppy and Alina’s menu was full of Oxfordshire character. They had worked hard to hunt out ingredients on their doorstep and from their gardens for their recipes. The more we can encourage young cooks to think about creating sustainable menus the better for our communities and for our planet.”
A great selection of local ingredients used for their goats' cheese and spinach ravioli plus homegrown rhubarb and raspberry crumble with Cotteswold Dairy milk and local eggs for their creme Anglaise sauce
Well done to the winners
The winners received a goody bag with an Oxfordshire Cookbook published by Meze, kitchen gadgets and vouchers to buy something to help their love of cooking. St Helen & St Katharine also received a £300 donation for their food technology department.
The runners up were from Shropshire and Gloucestershire, cooking dishes focused on Cotswold trout and Shropshire rare breed pork.
You can find out more about the Create & Cook Competition here.