Brooke Weston Year 10 Food Preparation and Nutrition Students received a special delivery of fresh mussels to prepare and cook as part of the ‘Fish in School Hero’ programme. The aim of the programme is to ensure that every child gets a chance to prepare, cook and eat fish before they leave school.

Fish in School Hero is managed by the Food Teachers Centre and they hope to reach over 60,000 pupils over the next 3 years. A representative from the Food Teachers Centre said, ‘Offshore Shellfish went out to harvest their amazing rope grown mussels for Brooke Weston. Their team have carefully selected a whole bunch of their mussels from their family farms and have donated them to us, for you to use in your classrooms’

Natasha Chiremba, Head of DT at Brooke Weston, said, ‘This term we have been learning about food provenance in our theory lessons and focusing on pastry skills in our practical lessons. It was wonderful to learn more about a sustainable, nutritious source of protein that is also native to the UK. Students cooked Thai style mussels and extended their pastry skills further by using some of the mussels to make a bacon, brie and mussel tartlet with enriched Parmesan pastry. I was extremely impressed with the group - none of them had prepared fresh shellfish before and they all got stuck in, were engaged and focused throughout and prepared superb dishes under tight time constraints. Many students tasted mussels for the first time and loved them! It was wonderful to have such a buzz in the food room with many staff coming in to give them a try and compliment the students on their refined cookery skills.’