The Garden Museum is about capturing what gardens mean to people. Food growing is an integral part of British gardening in people’s homes, allotments and even small public spaces – often cared or looked after by community groups. So it made sense for a cooking space to be incorporated in the Museum’s recent redevelopment. There are two new learning spaces, and the smaller of the two – the Learning Studio is fitted out as a kitchen. It is a calm space overlooking the Sackler Garden and can be used by small groups preparing food together.
In the Learning Studio we will focus on cooking with plants, grown locally and seasonally where possible. This means vegetables, fruits, whole grains, pulses (legumes), nuts and seeds. Our Food Learning Officer, Ceri Jones, is leading sessions promoting healthful recipes and ideas for cooking with these foods.
Many thanks to Deiss Kitchenware, Maxine Smeaton, Octopus Books, Yellow Kite and Harper Collins for donating equipment and cookery books for the studio.
Ceri arrived this July, and after a summer of equipping the kitchen with pots, pans, chefs knives and recipe books for inspiration as well as running some trial sessions, the autumn programme is now in place.
What’s in store?
Families
We’ll be running a monthly get-together called Family Feasts. These will run on Saturday mornings from 11.00am-1.30pm. The aim of these sessions are to get the whole family cooking and eating together, and of course vegetables will be involved. In October we’ll carve some pumpkins and make delicious soups and in November all attention turns to Christmas with a stir-up-Saturday class (on Saturday and Sunday) reviving a Victorian tradition for stirring up the family Christmas pudding five weeks before the big day. We’ll be stir
Children
Looking for autumn half-term entertainment? We’re hosting a 3-day cooking camp making recipes inspired by cuisines from around the world. This camp proved popular in our trial sessions this August when we cooked dishes from the Caribbean, South America and Persia, so you don’t want to miss out this Autumn. These sessions are ideally suited to children ages 6-10 who will need to be accompanied by an adult. Adults, will be donning an apron and getting involved too!
Adults
For those looking to gain confidence in the kitchen, cooking ‘whole foods’ from scratch, there is our Garden Museum cooking club. From 31st October we are running a 6-week cooking course on Tuesday mornings. Participants can come to the whole course, or individual sessions, depending on how much they are able to commit and want to learn. The course will cover various topics around seasonal vegetarian cooking, looking at salads and dressings, root to stalk cooking avoiding food wastage, cooking with whole grains, plant-based proteins, herbs and spices, stews and currys.
Finally, but by no means least, also for adults there is our Monthly Masterclass series taking place on Sundays. These classes are for cooking enthusiasts who want to enrich their culinary knowledge by spending some concentrated time exploring a subject. We may also from time to time invite in specialist teachers so they can share their knowledge with you too. We kick off on November 5th, when we have invited in Natural Pâtisserie chef Henrietta Inman to show you how to bring botanical flavours into your baking. Then in December chocolate tasting expert Meredith Whitely will be showing you how to taste and make chocolate peppered with botanical flavours, using all of your senses. These classes are a little bit more expensive, and any profits made from them will go straight back into the Museum’s learning programmes.
All classes include entry to the Museum, recipes to take home and lots of food to try – in fact most classes will include a sit down meal at the end of the class because we think that ‘breaking bread’ together is the best way to build our community.
To book, click on the links above or through our events page. If you have any questions about classes please email our Food Learning Officer Ceri Jones; ceri@gardenmuseum.org.uk