Catering and hospitality students cook up a storm during Navy chefs visit 

Catering and hospitality students at Northbrook College have been working with the Royal Navy Catering Services Branch this term.

They’ve enjoyed a series of interactive cooking workshops, which have put their culinary skills to the tests

Last week, on Thursday 27 March, level one students were divided into teams, and tasked with cooking lasagne and garlic bread. Each group was responsible for preparing a specific layer of the lasagne, including the white sauce, the pasta, and the meat and vegetable filling.

And a couple of weeks earlier, on Tuesday 4 March, level two and three students were tasked with cooking various duck and chicken-based dishes and some egg-based desserts in a Ready Steady Cook style competition.

The workshops were led by serving members of the Royal Navy and were followed by a presentation that covered the different roles within the Navy, career opportunities, and an insight into service life.

Leo Kennard, one of the level one students who took part in the day, said:
“I think it’s given us an extra few ideas for all the wide range of opportunities available to us. Everyone knows about restaurants, but people may not know too much about opportunities in the Navy, and we’ve had a lot of good information on that.”

George Hall, another of the level one students, added:
“It was very exciting, I was a bit nervous at the start, but as we got going, it was really good. The navy helped us a bit with the bolognese sauce, so that helped me build up my confidence.”

George Robson, one of the members of the Royal Navy Catering Services, said:
“We come out to explain what we do in our role as chefs, and highlight that we’re not just chefs, we’re firefighters and medics as well. We explain the role and we also do a bit of cooking as well and make it more interactive for the students.

“These trips are really good, when we first started doing them, we didn’t know how the students would respond. Sometimes it can be a little bit tough to get things out of students, but especially today, they have been really good and have engaged with us well.”

To learn more about the catering and hospitality courses on offer at Northbrook College, visit:
https://www.northbrook.ac.uk/study-with-us/subjects/catering-and-hospitality/