Mini's afternoon lesson: International Food Day

In this week’s post Mini, one of our newest trainers, tells us about a tasty lesson she served up to her class on our General English course. If you’re ready, then tuck in!

As well as having a passion for English language and its subtleties, I’ve always had a passion for food. This passion for food is what made me become a pastry chef before I became a teacher. And both of these passions together are what inspired me to organise an International Food Day with my afternoon students.

The idea behind this International Food Day is that each one of the students – and me, of course - would bring a traditional dish from their own country lovingly prepared by them so we could all try each other’s delicious fares as well as learn something else about the different cuisines and cultures that make up our group.

On the day of our gourmet celebration (Monday 24^th 2014) we all – well, almost all – arrived with our Tupperware containers and our carrier bags filled with delectable goodies and delicious creations indigenous to our various corners of the world. Before we could all tuck into the wonderful food, we had to write detailed recipes of our dishes. The aim of this task was more than purely educational, when they finished, I photocopied all of the recipes and made our own International Food Day Cookbook. Now each one of the students in the class will be able to cook each other’s dishes if they wish to do so!

After we finished our recipe-sharing, we all went downstairs to the student lounge to try our food. At long last! There were Italian pesto, cheese and Parma ham sandwiches in crusty ciabatta bread (from Silvia); yummy French crepes oozing with Nutella (from Cecilia); traditional Kazak sweet bread (from Assem); some sweet cupcakes (from Sara); spicy Korean noodles (from Jumbum); little morsels of heaven in the form of Brigadeiro (from Katrin) and Carrot cake (from me). I have to say that everything was delicious and even though not everybody was able to bring something they had cooked, everybody wrote their recipes so we have a fantastic cookbook! Thank you to all my students for sharing their yummy recipes!

Ps. If you want the cookbook, email me your recipe to [email protected] and I will send you a copy with it included J  

By Mini   

Glossary

tasty (adj) - delicious

serve up (phr. vb) - provide (usually but not necessarily food)

tuck in (phr. vb) - informal, to eat quickly

subtlety (n) - something that is difficult to describe

pastry chef (n) – a chef who is skilled in the making of pastries, desserts, breads and other baked goods

fare (n) – a range of food of a particular type

delectable (adj) – delicious

goody (n)  – a small treat which you enjoy

indigenous (adj) – occurring naturally in a particular place

ooze (vb) – when liquid moves slowly

morsels (n) – small pieces or amounts of food