Teaching pupils to cook risotto and crumble 'will tackle obesity'

Every 11-year-old in England will receive a free cookbook under plans to tackle obesity by teaching children how to prepare healthy meals.

Pupils should learn how to produce healthy versions of such classic dishes as spaghetti Bolognese, risotto, roast chicken or apple crumble, the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, said yesterday.

The 32 recipes in the book, Real Meals, were chosen from ideas put forward by the public. The top five suggestions were soup, risotto, Bolognese, shepherd's pie and stew. The top five dessert recommendations were fruit crumble, fruit pie, fruit salad, cakes and flapjacks.

Mr Balls urged parents to get their children, especially boys, to learn to cook at home, in a bid to fight obesity. "Schools are only part of the solution," he said. "At the end of the day, parents bring up children, not teachers. It will be great if young people had the chance to make healthy dishes from basic ingredients at home, not simply in the classroom."

Everyone should be able to prepare elementary, nutritious meals instead of taking pride in being unable to cook properly, Mr Balls added. "We've lost touch with making basic dishes from scratch, even though there has never been a wider range of food in our shops," he said. "Celebrity chef cookbooks are best-sellers but for too many people cooking is now something they watch on television instead of doing themselves. Cooking is not quantum physics. Once you've mastered basic dishes and techniques it is a straightforward skill you can build on for the rest of your life.

"Cooking and budgeting means you can prepare healthy, nutritious meals cheaply even in the face of rising food prices. It puts you in charge of your own health so that you can avoid salt, sugar and fat unlike with ready meals."

Mr Balls said there needed to be an end to the "classic gender divide" which sees very few boys learning to cook at school. Fewer than 4,000 boys sat GCSEs in home economics this summer, compared to almost 42,000 girls.

The chef Phil Vickery, who wrote the foreword to the book, said teaching children to cook was the best preparation they could receive for adulthood. "Cooking is a skill and often it is not learned at an early enough age," he added. "Once you can cook the basics you will have the best survival tool in the box to take you into adult life."

As part of the Government's anti- obesity drive in schools, more than £150m has been set aside to build new teaching kitchens, with cookery lessons becoming compulsory for pupils aged 11 to 14 from 2011. A further £750,000 will be spent recruiting and training 800 food technology teachers.

A three-course meal? It's child's play

Spicy Tomato Soup

1 onion

1 carrot

1 potato

1 can chopped tomatoes (400g)

500ml water

1 stock cube

1 x 5ml spoon dried chilli flakes

1 x 15ml spoon tomato puree

1. Prepare the vegetables by a) peeling and slicing the onion; b) topping and tailing, peeling and slicing the carrot; c) peeling and cutting the potato into eight pieces.

2. Put all the ingredients into a saucepan.

3. Stir everything together, bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes.

4. Pour the mixture into the liquidiser and blend until smooth.

5. Serve.

Paella

1 onion

1 or 2 cloves garlic

1 red pepper

1 chicken breast or 4 thighs

1 x 15ml oil

1 x 5ml spoon turmeric

1 x 5ml spoon paprika

750ml stock (1 x vegetable or chicken stock cube)

250g rice

25g frozen peas

100g mixed cooked seafood (eg prawns, mussels and squid) optional

1. Prepare the vegetables by a) peeling and chopping the onion; b) peeling and crushing the garlic; c) chopping and de-seeding the red pepper.

2. Remove any skin from the chicken, then dice it into chunks with a fresh knife on a clean chopping board.

3. Fry the onion and pepper in the oil for five minutes.

4. Add the garlic, turmeric and paprika and cook for a further two minutes.

5. Add the diced chicken and cook until it turns white.

6. Pour in the stock, bring to the boil and cook for five minutes.

7. Add the rice.

8. Bring to the boil and then allow to simmer for 15 minutes.

9. Stir in the frozen peas and seafood, and cook for a further five minutes.

Summer Pudding

150g blackcurrants

150g redcurrants

150g raspberries

100g caster sugar

2 x 15ml spoons water

5-6 slices white bread

1. Remove the currants from their stalks.

2. Put all the fruit, sugar and water into the saucepan.

3. Bring the fruit to the boil, then simmer for about five minutes.

4. Cut away the crusts from the bread, then cut all but one slice in half.

5. Arrange the slices in a pudding basin. Press the edges down firmly.

6. Spoon the fruit mixture into the basin. Keep a little of the juice for serving.

7. Cover with a whole slice of bread, making sure there are no gaps around the edge.

8. Place the saucer on top and then add the weight – this will press everything together.

9. Allow to cool and then place in the fridge overnight.

10. To serve, turn out on to a plate and cut into wedges. Pour over the remaining juice.