SQA Subject Blog - Hospitality, Food and Drink BlogSCILT are thrilled to announce that they are once again working in partnership with City of Glasgow College to host LinguaChef competition. It brings together two of their favourite topics – languages and food! As well as practising linguistic and culinary skills, pupils will work on their wider social, literacy, numeracy and financial skills.
Pupils from P1 – S6 are invited to …
The 24th February to 2nd March is officially Cornish Pasty week. In fact on the 2nd of March it is the World Pasty Championships at the Eden Centre.
What is a Cornish Pasty?
Pasties are pies, in that the meat and veg (traditionally, more on that later) is encased in pastry. In the case of a Cornish Pasty this must be a circle of pastry folded over and crimped together along the edge forming the traditional crescent shape.
The History Bit
Cornish pastoes go way back to the 13th century when they were the provence of rich people. They would be filled with seafood, beef, veneson, lamb or even eels in a rich gravy. It was not until this kind of eating had gone out of favour with the upper classes and in the 17th and 18th century that the Cornish pasty became the food of the workers.
They were the perfect filling lunch for miners who were working all day in dreadful conditions underground. In many cases the pastry of the pasty would be there as a lunch box and could be so hard it could survive falling down a mine shaft! You see these were lead mines and the lead on the hands of the miners touching the outer pastry would make it poisonous which is why it would be discarded. If you wrapped your pasty in a cloth you could eat the casing as well.
What’s in it?
Traditionally the pasty should contain no less than 25% meat with the rest of the filling made up of potatoes, onions and swede. This filling would actually be cooked inside the pastry casing so all the juices came together as a gravy.
Of course other filllings are possible, anything goes really as long as you are not sticking to the traditional recipe. Some pasties (even back in the mines) would have the savoury filling at one end and a piece of pastry in the centre creating a division and in the other half would be dried fruit, apple or anything sweet as a dessert. The outer pastry casing would …
Every year the Fairtrade Fortnight has a theme and this year it is all about the people we should be thinking about who are producing our food and most particularly the women. The tag line this year is She Deserves. For example; She deserves a doctor, She deserves to eat, She deserves clean water, She deserves a living wage.
Let’s take cocoa for example, the main ingredient in our favourite treat – chocolate!
Much of the cocoa for chocolate comes from the Cote d’Ivoire in West Africa and £1.98 is the estimated amount a cocoa farmer needs to earn each day to live. Currently the typical cocoa farmer only earns 78p per day, can you even imagine that?
For women the situation is even worse, not only do they have to plant, tend and harvest the cocoa beans but they also have to fetch and carry water and wood for their families every day. Cook and clean and care for their children as well. All that for less than a pound a day.
Fairtrade want everyone to have a Living Income. What is a living income? A living income is making enough money each day for a simple yet dignified life, a human right. Enugh money for basic food, for clean water, for medical attention when required. All the things that we in the west …
This is the blog for SQA’s Hospitality and Food and Drink teams, where you will find all the latest news, information and updates relating to the work that we do.
