Food Technology Update

It’s been a busy first half of 2025 in the kitchen at FHS.

Our latest batch of Breakfast Bootcampers (year 7) have been put through their paces as part of their 20-week introduction to the essential skills of food technology. From frying corn fritters to boiling chicken and ginger congee, baking breakfast pies to sauteing huevos rancheros, our Bootcampers now have the basic cooking techniques under their command. If your child is part of this latest cohort, make sure they keep practising at home – you can find all the recipes we made in class, including James’ Mystery Breakfast Dish, on our Google Classroom page.

Bootcamp grads: Hawo A, Harriet L, Willa NM, Bri C and Lulu GW

Goodbye breakfast, hello dinner: at year 8 level, our Not Just Noodlers have been busy this semester expanding their repertoire of cooking techniques. The shallow-fried chicken schnitzel is a favourite, along with the steamed salmon and potato salad with green goddess dressing. For their final task, our Noodlers design a dinner meal for $5 or less using a prescribed list of ingredients. How do they work out how much their recipe costs? They turn a blank spreadsheet into a recipe costing calculator! (Don’t worry, I don’t tell them that this is a numeracy-rich activity).

Noodler grads: Eamon K and Felix C, Claudia CT and Maebh C

At Extend level, three cheers and a big high five to all the year 9 and 10 students involved in putting together the latest edition of FHS’s favourite digital food magazine, The Fitzroy Flavour. Back again is our long-running feature series, Family Meal, where students tell the stories behind their most-loved recipes. Edition nine features some of the most big-hearted stories yet. I’m so proud of all the contributors for sharing their recipes. You can find the latest edition of The Fitzroy Flavour on your Compass news stream, or you can contact me if you’d like a hard copy version (james.hardie@education.vic.gov.au).

The cover of the latest edition of The Fitzroy Flavour, featuring Randy L’s Family Meal recipe, Banh Xeo.

What’s The Beef, our deep dive into the world of meat, is a great opportunity for Extend students to get a taste of what VCE Food Studies is all about, in the sense that it applies a sociological lens to the world of food. Students also have to complete tasks that mimic the type of assessments that take place in year 11 and 12, including a mini exam. There’s plenty of cooking challenges too, including the famous Kangaroo pie, cricket falafel, and the legume design brief (trust me, it’s more interesting than it sounds!). Knowing where your food comes from, and the issues involved in its production, is a critical component of food literacy, and I’m confident that our Beefies are equipped to make informed choices when it comes to meat.

Looking to the future, I’m excited to run the second edition of The Great Fitzroy Bake Off in semester two this year. The first iteration of this new Extend subject quickly became a cult-classic in the student community, and competition for spots was high. Last year we ran a bake sale at the school production; stay tuned for the location of our next baked pop-up!

The OG Bake Off cast!