ROME WASN'T BAKED IN A DAY

We've been immersed in Ancient Rome over the past few weeks. When Ruth and Pete at Myers-Insole Local Learning CIC asked us to cater for their company's 10th anniversary they made a request that we cooked vegetarian Romano-British food. Loving a challenge, there followed several weeks of research into what food was available and how it would have been cooked. Admittedly we imagined that the clever Romans would have smuggled a few amphorae of olive oil and olives into Britain but we were amazed at how you could trace modern Italian food back to many early dishes and how delicious they were. Around sixty guests tucked into the spelt and flat breads and pulmentum or relishes at the anniversary celebrations at Hamilton House in Stokes Croft. This week we're cooking many of the recipes with year 5 at St Michael on the Mount School. We'll be sharing with them some of the fascinating facts that we found out, including that Romans had their own fast food restaurants called 'popinae' which served takeaways of sausage and fried fish. The above photo shows 'placenta' - cheese and honey pies being 'built' by year 5 at St Michael's.

A SOUP FOR AUTUMN

Here's an autumn favourite of Clare's; a butternut squash and apple soup. It's a perfect soup to serve at Halloween or around a bonfire and a great way to use up those last windfall apples.

INGREDIENTS: 1 tbsp of oil; 1 onion, finely chopped; 1 tsp curry powder; 2 eating apples, peeled, cored and chopped; 1 butternut squash, peeled, de-seeded and chopped, 1 litre of vegetable stock; salt and pepper.

METHOD:

1. Gently heat the oil in a large pan, add the onions and cook for about 5 minutes until softened but not browned.

2. Stir in the curry powder and apple and cook gently for 1-2 minutes; be careful it doesn't burn.

3. Add the squash and the stock and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for about 15-20 minutes until the squash feels soft and is cooked. Remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool for a few minutes before liquidising. Taste the soup and add salt if needed and ground black pepper. Re-heat gently before serving.

THANK YOU DARTINGTON SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS

When we started Travelling Kitchen it seemed natural that we set it up as a social enterprise, with any profits being invested in our core work bringing cooking into schools and communities. Over the past year, Travelling Kitchen has been lucky to receive support from the Dartington School for Social Entrepreneurs funded by the Big Lottery Fund and Lloyds Bank. I've just completed the year long start-up programme which has provided study days on key elements of social business and inspiration by the bucketful from my fellow social entrepreneurs. After every meeting I never failed to return fired up with enthusiasm and with new ideas for how we could take Travelling Kitchen forward. The grant which accompanied the award has enabled us to buy the cooking equipment that we needed to take our idea into communities. Last week nineteen of us from the programme 'graduated' at The Station in central Bristol; a fantastic day which celebrated what we had achieved over the past year. So thank you School for Social Entrepreneurs for all your support and watch this space for the next bit of the journey!