Pilot master class on school meals

On the 2nd day of the project partners’ meeting in Jūrkalne, on 10 May, the partners visited restaurant “Meisons” in Ventspils, where the first pilot activity of Kurzeme Region took place – the master class for chefs and representatives of 10 Kurzeme schools on how to cook healthy local meals for school-children lead by the chef and member of the “New chefs’ movement” Žanis Raivo Behmanis. Žanis had been given an unusual task – to fit into the 2,15 EUR limit per meal, which is the support set by the state for 1 small class (grade 1 to 4) child’s meal per day. Žanis did the task successfully and cooked 3 different meals: a seemingly “provocative”, yeat healthy pizza with healthy ketchup, Jerusalem artichoke or the so called “ugly potatoes” meal with bacon, sweet cream and lightly salted cucumbers and Kotēni farm grown pearl barley risotto with tomatoes. When preparing food, Žanis wanted the name of the meal to be easy, understandable and interesting for kids – i.e., using the name “ketchup” for the homemade, healthy sauce or by replacing the unusual name of  “Jerusalem artichoke“ with an “ugly potato”. Since all kids love pizza, Žanis used it as one of the offered meals, by at the same time replacing the traditional pizza base with a natural yeast dough.

Participants were also were introduced with the traditional “suiti” dish – sklandrausis, which was included in the EU food quality scheme  “Traditional Speciality Guaranteed” in 2011 as the first meal from Latvia. Everyone had a chance to try its hand in making the traditional Kurzeme dish and bake their own unique pie!

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