Just like granny used to make - Anne Hailes

Calling all grannies. Do you share your cooking and baking skills with your grandchildren?

Calling all children. Do you share your granny’s cooking and baking skills? If so you could enter a competition and possibly become the next Rising Star Young Chef of the Year.

I remember watching my granny making wheaten bread and, as she floured the baking tray, the sound of her wedding ring tapping the sides as she turned it round and round until it was covered. Just being with her, talking and watching gave us a remarkable bond and me an insight into the realms of culinary skills.

Granny On A Large Scale

Ann King, who is spearheading the competition, is grandmother to 11 children from 13 to 22 years of age and they have all benefitted from her example, healthy eating and using imagination to produce exciting dishes; now she wants to encourage other young people to get involved in cooking and hopes the competition will encourage them to come forward with their menus to be judged later this year.

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By way of example she told me how the late chef Gary Rhodes grew up in a single parent household, with two sisters and a mother who was working by day. As he was first home from school it fell to him to prepare the tea time meal. He called with the butcher to pick up the meat and showed such an interest the butcher taught him about the cuts and the cooking.

Celebrated chef James Martin’s granny apparently made the best Yorkshire puddings in the world and watching her in the kitchen excited his passion, which resulted in him becoming a much loved - and multi-millionaire - television personality.

I remember watching my granny making wheaten bread and, as she floured the baking tray, the sound of her wedding ring tapping the sides as she turned it round and round until it was covered. Just being with her, talking and watching gave us a remarkable bond and me an insight into the realms of culinary skills

“Needs must,” Ann explained. “And children get hungry and will experiment especially if there’s no-one in the house until later, so it’s a good idea for their mother or grandmother to discuss safe cooking with them and making sure there are ingredients in the house they can use and so develop their skills.”

Of Ann’s 11 grandchildren there is just one girl, Megan, who is 13 and shares a birthday with her granny. Like many children she specialises in scones and pancakes and learns every day, spaghetti bolognese and sausage casserole are also popular.

Experience Counts

“Older people have memories of cooking from local produce, shin on the bone for soup, no tins or packets, cutting up the fresh vegetables and if you have the opportunity to find a boiling foul a really special soup and, when I was growing up people joked about knowing 101 ways with spam,” says Ann.

“Nothing was thrown out and budgeting was important. In those days all the family became involved in some way and we still enjoy this at family parties when everyone has to contribute a dish.”

I remember Saturday night meant me making an omelette for my dad ‘because I did it so well’ but I suspect it was to give my mum a break. My brothers and I had to take turns to bake a sandwich cake each week and so we learned and got an interest in creating.

In more recent times, when my grandsons visit, the first thing they say is, ‘Granny, can we make pancakes?’ and, like Megan, together with scones they have learned the basics and don’t need me to supervise any longer.

Up For The Challenge?

Now Ann has thrown out a challenge to young people between 10 and 16 years old on July 31 this year. She is managing director of Families First NI Ltd and the competition’s founder. She has dedicated herself to recognising and awarding people who make a special contribution to their community and already has established awards for doctors, nurses, mothers, fathers, teachers amongst other categories, and now for the first time young people.

She’s looking for the Rising Star Young Chef of the Year 2024 and this week is sending information to 600 secondary schools and colleges about the competition. Young people between 10 and 16 years of age are asked to make a five minute video introducing themselves to the judges, explaining why they have chosen their particular dish, showing how it’s prepared and where the influence for cooking came from - at home, in school, or perhaps through television programmes.

Include your name and a contact number for your parents/guardian to youngchefni@gmail.com. Get your video to Ann as soon as possible for preliminary judging before the finals to be held in the Titanic, where their chef will demonstrate a signature dish, and the finalists, perhaps 20 or so, must reproduce the dish and then under the expert eye of chief judge chef Stephen Jeffers, principal tutor at Belfast Cookery School, the winner and runners up will be announced.

The prize? Ann is tight lipped: “It’s still under wraps, but it’s big.”