Acclaimed Food Writer Joins Alleyn’s Cookery Club

This week’s Virtual Cookery Club took on a delicious Ottolenghi turn when pupils were joined by acclaimed food writer, Tara Wigley. Tara is best known for co-authoring Ottolenghi SIMPLE, with Yotam Ottolenghi, and FALASTIN which she co-authored with Sami Tamimi.

The Alleyn’s Virtual Cookery Club has been a real highlight to many pupils and their lucky families during lockdown. Each week, pupils choose a menu and join a live cook-a-long led by Alleyn’s Head of Food and Nutrition, Mr Sharp, making a delicious meal for the whole family to tuck into. This week’s special menu of lamb and feta meatballs, stuffed courgette with pine nut salsa and roasted cauliflower with green tahini, selected by Tara Wigley from the Ottolenghi SIMPLE cookbook, was no exception!

As well as producing a mouth-watering meal, pupils and staff had the chance to put their questions to Tara and learn more about her fascinating career, including how to get into the world of food writing, just what it takes to produce a cookbook, as well as what Tara’s desert island ingredient would be.

Everyone was surprised to learn that it takes up to two years to write a cookbook from start to finish, with a rigorous testing plan to ensure the recipe that people make at home is as the authors had planned. She encouraged pupils to focus on what they love, recommending that if you have an idea of something you would like to do, to stick with it and use effective and low-cost means such as social media to see if there is a market for it. And we learned that if Tara was to be stranded on a desert island, she could not live without lemons, olives (to make her own olive oil) and aubergines!

Thank you to Tara for a fascinating session and a delicious recipe. The final dishes all looked fantastic. Ava in Year 7 said: “Thank you so much for the lesson! My family loved it!” and Daniel in Year 7 said: “My family all loved the food. It was good to listen to Tara Wigley's fascinating story. My mum is about to buy her books now!”