6 Midwinter Meals for Beginners

Did the recent Covid lockdown expose your culinary shortcomings? If you want to know how to put a good meal on the table without opening tins or packets then this is the course for you.

Spread over 6 weeks, this beginners cookery course will show you how to cook 6 different homemade meals that are quick, easy, healthy and economical. If you don’t know what to do with a turnip or aren’t quite sure what a Santoku is used for, this course will get you cooking like a professional!

Each week builds on the skills and knowledge of the week before so that by the end of the course you will have learnt enough to be able to prepare at least 9 other dishes. That gives you a repertoire of at least 15 different meals to ‘mix and match’ on the dinner table!

Our menus are designed for absolute novices and as well as covering the basics such as how to prepare and cook each dish, the class will also cover other essential topics such as shopping for groceries, food handling and hygiene, food storage/ using left-overs and how to adapt meals.

To keep costs as low as possible, students are asked to provide the ingredients they need. Each week the student will receive a shopping list via email. Our recipes are written so you can choose how many people you want to cook for – simply bring in enough groceries for your whanau!

At each class, students will also receive a lesson plan giving them a clear understanding of the objectives and expectations for each session. A recipe sheet will be provided so that students can take them away and build up a stock of recipes in a folder. Each recipe gives ideas on how to vary the recipe depending on what you have in the pantry or who you are cooking for. Suggestions are also given on how to ‘pimp-it-up’ (make it look fabulous for a special occasion or ‘dress-it-down’ (adapt the recipe using quick and easy ingredients for a meal in minutes).