Classroom swap with the kitchen

All Photos by Di Harris

Classroom swap with the kitchen

Tags australian country style magazine, best harvest table, kitchen, students PRIZEMONEY of $5000 would be icing on the cake for Imbil students who swapped their classroom for a kitchen last week.

Months of planning, gardening and caring for livestock culminated in an eight-course country luncheon that even Jamie Oliver would be proud of, and it happened in the tiny country town of Imbil.

Mary Valley State College teacher Lisa James inspired her troops to enter the Best Harvest Table competition in the Australian Country Style magazine, which was targeted at individuals, classes or schools who could best demonstrate the popular paddock-to-plate strategy.

The school already had a well-established agricultural program under Mrs James's guidance, which includes its participation in the Edible School Gardens program, so she filled out the form.

With support from Edible School Gardens staff Leonie Shanahan and Di Harris, Eumundi chef Max Porter was engaged for the day and the students were given a menu for which they were required to pick, prep and plate up eight courses.

Beginning with cream of sorrel and silverbeet soup, the menu offered two more appetisers - tomato cups with spring salad and minced chicken, cucumber, mint with glass noodle, before getting into the serious mains with a choice of southern fried chicken morsels, grandmother's roast chicken with sage and bread stuffing and gravy, split green beans with lemon honey, macadamia dressing, crisp garden salad with cottled egg and mall cheddar salad cream, and baked spuds with olive oil potato filling.

Aside from a few minor ingredients, the Imbil school edible garden and chicken coop provided the meat and veggies for the menu.

The program is a whole-of-school subject but the harvest day luncheon was a Year 6 project, and provided a change from packed sandwiches for the entire school population, teachers included Ms Shanahan has been involved with harvest day events before that have catered for more people, but she had never seen so many courses cooked on the one occasion at a school.

Among the special guests was Bevan McLeod, of McLeod's Agriculture, who supplies the school with soil conditioner and also brought along a bag of organic oranges to be used on the day. Mrs James said Stephanie Alexander - cook, restaurateur, food writer and champion of the quality and diversity of Australian food - was among the judges for the harvest table competition.

"Our edge was the fact that we raised our own chickens and then used them for the menu," she said. "The kids have learned so much this year with the ag program."