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Forget meat and three veg, a group of country high school kids has embraced the latest in global food trends and flavours — including a 'need for seed', vegan and Mexican — to win a national recipe competition.
Key Points
- High school home economics students from across Australia took part in the 2019 Recipe Challenge developed by he Home Economics Institute of Australia and McCormick Foods
- Students had to create dishes based on the 2019 Flavour Forecast, featuring food trends including seeds, vegan and Mexican
- A team from St Columba Anglican School on the NSW Mid North Coast won the challenge
Teams of home economics students from high schools across the country, took part in the annual Recipe Challenge, developed by the Home Economics Institute of Australia and McCormick Foods.
Entries flooded in from Darwin, to Kalgoorlie and Kingscliff, and it was a team of budding young chefs from Port Macquarie's St Columba Anglican School, on the New South Wales mid-north coast, who took out the national crown.
The Year 10 students said they were shocked and delighted to win.
"I was so happy for us and all our classmates," student Sean Bosschieter said.
"We put so much effort into it — a lot of learning about different flavours and foods, and trial and error with dishes — over several weeks."
St Columba food technology teacher Amanda Cooper said it was a huge achievement.
"I was very surprised they could make such inspirational and creative dishes that were restaurant quality," she said.
"The students were cheering with excitement when they found out they had won, they weren't sure they were going to stand a chance."
Flavour forecasts: seeds, chillies, Mexican and vegan
The Recipe Challenge required the home economics students to create and prepare dishes based around the yearly McCormick Flavour Forecast report.
The report analyses emerging food trends and flavours, and is prepared by home economists, sensory scientists, chefs and food experts from across the world.
Michelle Zammit is with Culinary Product Development at McCormick Foods and said this year's trends in the spotlight included 'need for seed' and 'Mexicana vegana' — involving Mexican and vegan foods,
"While our signature Flavour Forecast report is a global initiative, Australia is proud to be taking the trends and flavours into the classrooms of the next generation of foodies," she said.
"We asked the students to look at trends that are really quite forward thinking and bring together dishes that you would be surprised to see 15-year-olds prepare."
The students at St Columba Anglican School prepared three recipes to take out the national prize, including poached eggs on sourdough, with honey-spiced roasted pumpkin, beetroot puree, whipped feta and toasted 7 seeds, and spicy Mexican tacos.
"They won because they ticked all boxes in terms of not only the food, but their justifications, their reflections, how they arrived at the final dishes they did arrive at were very considered," Ms Zammit said.
"They've done an amazing job, the balance with the heat, spice, textures and colour …their presentations were amazing, especially the dessert."
The standout dessert was a Mexican-inspired Eton mess with coconut/paprika vegan ice cream.
"They made miniature meringues using aquafaba [chickpea juice], they made a dairy free ice-cream with coconut cream, they made a chilli-chocolate crumb and a raspberry and lime coulis to go with it," she said.
"So you can imagine those flavours all coming together on one plate. And they are 15 years old."
Weeks of classroom taste-testing
St Columba student Caitlin Lloyd said they spent weeks taste testing different culinary creations before coming up with their final recipes.
"We all enjoyed creating the different flavour combinations and getting to taste test what worked and what didn't," she said.
"For the dessert, we trialled about four different ice-creams, so we had a coconut and lime, a paprika, a turmeric ice-cream and also maple syrup, but we went with the paprika as it tasted most Mexican, the turmeric tasted more like an Indian spice, so we didn't go with that one."
Student Abby Pearce said the entire menu also had to be completed within a budget of $26.
"We had to have particular spices and we had to include a vegan ice-cream and some berries," she said.
The students said they drew on their home economics lessons to refine their recipes.
"This term, we have been focusing on food trends and what goes well together, flavour combinations that work really well, so we went through that process," student Isabella Riedel said.
"Food trends are vegan options and clean-eating, organic foods."
The team was selected over other strong state and territory winners from around Australia, including: OneSchool Global, Toowoomba, Queensland; Our Lady of the Sacred Heart College, Victoria (Victoria/Tasmania division); Great Southern Grammar, Western Australia; and Naracoorte High School, South Australia (SA/NT division).
Adventurous flavours moving forward
Students at St Columba Anglican School said they looked forward to creating adventurous new recipes in the future.
"Food used to be very simple meat and veggies, but I think we are definitely moving towards crazy different dishes to try," student Timothy Ebbs said.
Ms Zammitt said globally, new flavours were emerging, and chilli remained a firm favourite.
"In terms of the seeds, there are well-known seeds, including black sesame seeds, but lotus seed is probably one of the most interesting ones, common in Chinese and Asian cuisine," she said.
"I would have to say chilli has been a recurring trend, we have had a chilli in our Flavour Forecast since 2013.
"People's knowledge is becoming greater, so now we have to look for chillies perhaps a little less known. There's Argentinian chillies, there's yellow chillies, ones people might not know as much about but are becoming more common in restaurants.
"African flavours and Middle-Eastern flavours are also big trends coming through in the next few years."
Topics: regional, edible-plants, vegetable-fruit-nuts, hospitality, community-and-society, independent-schools, secondary-schools, private-schools, public-schools, education, schools, health, lifestyle-and-leisure, food-and-cooking, port-macquarie-2444, toowoomba-4350, naracoorte-5271, albany-6330, bentleigh-3204
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