Community Cookery
Do I need a well equipped kitchen to run a cookery course or session?
You don’t. You need access to some water and a flat surface. A plug socket is useful but not essential. I use gas camping stoves and electric hobs and can bring all other necessary equipment for all sorts of cookery sessions and courses. I’ve previously run sessions in allotments, school art rooms, church halls.
Do I need to be a chef to teach other people to cook?
Absolutely not! You need to like food, be good at working with people - and to teach things that you're comfortable with. It's often best as a teacher not to be too expert or far away from what you're teaching - it helps you to know what your students are going to want support with.
Can you teach all kinds of cookery?
We can teach nutritious home cooking - we're also a dab hand at bread and cakes. We co-teach with professionals like dietitians and English language teachers when it's useful to have more than one type of expertise. For anything we don't do - things like filleting fish, butchery, winemaking - we can recommend other people.
Do you think anyone can learn to cook?
Absolutely! Some people need more support, but for most of us it’s all about getting more confidence and inspiration. When I've worked with people with mild to moderate learning disabilities we have cooked elaborate 3 course meals and the thing that has changed is the resources, the amount of time and the available support. When training nursery staff we discussed supervision ratios and how long things will take (and how much mess there will be), but we still promote cooking proper food.
There’s a tendency for TV chefs and cookery programmes to make cooking look more complicated than it is, and people feel that what they do isn’t ‘proper' cooking. Over the years so many people have said to me “Oh, I can’t cook, I can do simple stuff like pasta or Sunday roasts but I can’t cook”.
Events catering
Where are you based and how far will you deliver food for an event?
The Cardamom Pod is based in Brighton, East Sussex. We’ll deliver within 10 miles of Brighton, we will need to be able to park (if only briefly) to deliver the food to you.
Do you do drinks and service for events?
Not at the moment, we are concentrating on delicious cold buffets and lunch boxes for now. We will deliver all the food in recyclable boxes and leave it with you to display and eat at whatever time is best for you.
Roughly how much do you cost?
Get in touch to discuss what you would like but roughly - six items from our menu cost £6 per head, for more than 6 items get in touch for a quote. We also offer lunch boxes for £6.50 a head for 3 salads and a choice of 2 other items from the menu - plus a complimentary spicy tomato salsa.
Can you cater for special diets
Absolutely - as long as we know in advance. We are experienced in vegetarian, vegan and gluten free cookery and are extremely adaptable. We have a 5* food safety rating and are used to keeping foods separate, avoiding cross contamination etc. However we cook all sorts of foods in our kitchen so if you need food prepared in an environment where there is never gluten, for example, then we may not be the people for you.
Do you do birthday cakes?
Yep - and we can do the writing as well - we do REALLY nice cakes
Any more questions? Get in touch to talk about food!