Leiths Partnership Schools

Meet Chef AJ, Director of Partnerships & Development. Find out why Leiths has taken on this initiative and why it’s important.

A huge, and I mean huge, project has been rumbling away at Leiths HQ for the past few years. With the dream of getting schoolkids across the country cooking, Leiths has distilled years of experience in practical cookery education into its box-fresh Partnership School Programme.

‘The really important bit,’ says Alistair Turner, the man behind the programme ‘is to get more kids to pick up a whisk or a knife or a wooden spoon and just to mix something.’ He re-adjusts his glasses and scratches his head for the seventh time on our call. He has an almost wizardy energy which is devoted to getting more kids in primary and secondary schools ‘actually cooking’. We’re colleagues who have only ever met via Teams but I feel like he’s in the room, marking up his big dreams on a blackboard.

‘We’ve got to a place where practical cookery is the exception and not the norm.’

I’m keen to ask Alistair, a trained architect and former chef at Rick Stein’s The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow, what sets Leiths apart from its educational competitors.

‘It’s all about things that are delicious. If you remove the carrot from a carrot cake it isn’t carrot cake anymore.’

His straightforwardness takes me by surprise. But he has a point and is informed by his days as a cookery teacher in Truro.

‘I’ve been in so many budget meetings where they say: “Well we won’t put cinnamon in it, we’ll take that out because we’re gonna have to buy a jar of cinnamon.” And actually, cinnamon is a key ingredient and the child will go – “Oh ok, that’s cinnamon”. They all know what flour is.’

‘You could substitute these other ingredients such as a courgette or beetroot and add some chocolate powder.’

‘Our [Leiths] recipes are delicious and actually work.’

Indeed, our lessons are fully costed and timed to fit into a 50-minute lesson plan. Much of the lesson is done through video-led learning and ‘80% or thereabouts is practical cookery with us’, he enthuses.

‘In the current GCSE offering, he tells me ‘cooking doesn’t make up the majority of the course, it’s the theory.’

So, what’s chalked up on the big dream blackboard for fifty years’ time?

‘Whatever level you’re at, practical cookery should be a staple of the curriculum, just like doing your maths lessons.‘

‘You can count lemons, you can learn to spell lime.‘

‘That would be the fifty-year dream.’