From pasta to stir-fry: foods children should learn to cook in school

Prue Leith has talked about the importance of teaching children to cook at school and for packed lunches to be banned.

“The most important thing is to teach children to cook at schools,” she says. “And not only to cook but to understand about where their food comes from.”

We’re a long way from programmes like Chefs in Schools, a British chef-led scheme to feed nutritious fresh food cooked from scratch for 72p per child per meal, or Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard in the USA, for whom “gardens and kitchens are interactive classroom”, making waves beyond the liberal enclaves of their respective countries.

But if in a magical unicornville where Bambi’s mum didn’t die, where every child’s lunchbox was a festival of superfoods, and where home economics classes were made a priority, what crucial culinary skills would we bestow on our children? Some thoughts below; emphasis on laying foundations, lack of faff, accessible ingredients, and making veg so delicious that Monster Munch become the edible equivalent of Mordred: a traitor of legend, who no one believes in any more.