I've never been keen on cookery lessons. They were rather a dreary affair in the 50s when I was at school. My macaroni cheese dried up and my sponge cake came out flat. A complete failure. Foolishly, I only learned one recipe from my mother – fish and chips – because I never would do as I was told, and I can't quite get the hang of cookery books. So here I am at Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food in Rotherham, for my last chance saloon, hoping to perk up my cooking. The lesson for today is Quick Salmon Tikka with Cucumber Yoghurt.
It sounds rather grand – a Ministry of Food, and Oliver's original plan for it was perhaps super-optimistic: he would teach a few people in Rotherham to cook, they'd each pass on what they had learned to two more people, until most of the town was cooking up lovely, healthy food, and cutting down on takeaways and ready-cooked rubbish. But the "passing on" idea tended to fizzle out after a few links of the chain, and the plan had to change.
What is left is this gem of a place which seems to be transforming lives. It's surprisingly modest, in a smallish shop at the edge of a square, opposite a rather stunning minster. I'm almost cooking on display in a shop window, but it still feels like a friend's kitchen, and I don't usually like to go overboard with my praise, but this time I have to.
This is the best cookery lesson of my life. I cannot fault it. I'm in a small class of six, there's no bellowing, bullying chef, no po-faced teacher, no complex recipes, no obscure ingredients, no hurry, no stress. The teacher, Lisa Taylor, is perfect: cheery, personable, not the tiniest bit bossy or condescending. Her instructions are crystal clear and I ought to feel a humiliated clot for not knowing most of this already, but I don't. Instead, it just feels like a heavenly new experience: how to chop properly, how to hold the knife, whether to use the stalks, how to tell when the salmon's cooked, how much and what bits of the chilli pepper to use for medium hot, hotter and vicious. I've managed to ignore all that stuff for 60 years, but now I've got it precisely in minutes.
Admittedly, everything's ready for me, the knives are lovely and sharp, the helpers are charming (they whisk away dirty dishes and chopping boards and I don't have to go shopping or wash up), but this is the first time I've had a fun time cooking. Then we eat it. It's exquisite. Even if I do say so myself.
No wonder the place is booked up and there's a waiting list for lessons. Two weeks before the end of term, a notice was put in the window offering classes for children in the holidays. Within 48 hours, every place had been snapped up. All sorts of people want to come here: firemen, policemen, pensioners, young mothers, a group from the children's charity Barnado's. To encourage them, the public were invited, before the place was decorated, to come in and write their favourite meals on the walls. What would they like to cook? Answer: fajitas, pizzas, burgers, pasta, Indian and Chinese food, chilli con carne, muffins. It reads like a list of takeaways, but healthy versions of all those suggestions are included in the Ministry's 10-week cookery course. The salmon tikka we're making today is very low in salt and fat, easy to cook, and cheaper than a takeaway. Where else could you learn to cook such a thing? Where can you learn to cook anything at all nowadays if you missed out in your youth?
Earlier this year, Jeff, aged 84, turned up desperate for cookery lessons. Like many chaps of his age, his mother had cooked for him in his youth, then his wife took over. But she got Alzheimer's and Jeff had to start cooking. For a year or so he and his wife lived on tinned food, until he realised he needed to cook properly. He went to Citizens Advice to ask where he could learn. Were there any classes anywhere? No. So he turned up here and inspired one of the Ministry's new targets: food for the elderly.
Oliver recently told Channel 4 that he thinks the way we sometimes treat and feed old people is terrible: "I think what we feed people in hospital is unforgivable – you'd save a fortune just by feeding them well and getting them out early." It seems so obvious one wonders why the idea hasn't caught on already. Bad food makes you ill, good food makes you healthy. Duh. It is an outrage that sick and helpless people are still being fed muck. But it still takes someone like Oliver to do something about it. Which? magazine is saying the same thing and campaigning for better food in hospitals. "Food has a significant effect on recovery," says Miranda Watson, a Which? campaigner. "Good food makes you better quicker, which is cheaper." In many hospitals, "meals contradict doctors' advice", she says. They're too salty, too fatty and, even worse, they taste ghastly. The same goes for care homes. Judy Downey, of the Residents and Relatives Association, points out that "not only are there no minimum nutritional standards, but the government has already reduced the 'regulatory burden' on care homes and is planning to go even further away from regular inspection".
No wonder she's exasperated. So am I. That's really why I've come to Rotherham, because, like Downey, I've been banging on for years about the rotten food the elderly are too often given in institutions. There seems to be little practical help from on high, but down here on the ground, among those who have to dole out execrable, usually pre-cooked food and deal with the consequences, great efforts are being made by individuals to improve standards.
In my class is a group of carers and a resident from Voyage Homes, brought here by Paul Booth, a care home manager, who is cooking on my left. He and his colleagues look after learning disabled and elderly clients, which includes cooking for them, or helping them to cook. Booth had noticed that many of his colleagues hadn't a clue how to cook and knew that the people he was caring for needed better food. "It was dull and stodgy – lots of pies and puddings, and some carers would throw any random thing into the pot – tins of anything – minced beef and gravy, plus a tin of sweet and sour. Disgusting. Everybody should be able to cook a good, balanced meal. I don't understand why people apply for a job as a support worker if they can't cook, but they still get the job. The interviewing is out of our hands."
He convinced his company that coming here was a good idea. He had done the full 10-week course himself, and now he is training his colleagues. And there's an added bonus. Since he started cooking here in January, he's lost five stone. His colleague Craig, also cooking today, has lost four and a half stone. Altruism rewarded.
The Ministry of Food has been so successful that Rotherham council plans to take over the funding (it costs £150,000 a year to run and Oliver paid for the first year). Fourteen more councils are thinking of following Rotherham's example. The NHS's Change4Life advertising programme, which includes videos and TV ads designed by the makers of Morph and Wallace and Gromit, costs some £72m to market. Its animated clay characters show us "how we can eat well, move more and live longer". It would cost considerably less to run a Ministry of Food centre for a year in just 100 of England's borough councils.
Luckily, Oliver isn't the only one trying to improve food quality for vulnerable people. TV chef Paul Rankin has been working for several years with Barchester Homes, training their chefs and trying to make meals enjoyable. "It's a non-sexy sector of the food industry and difficult to find staff," he says, "but in fact it's very rewarding. Kids often turn their noses up at freshly cooked food, but older people appreciate good, old-fashioned, simple food cooked with fresh ingredients. Because they've cooked with natural foods all their lives, they can spot that precooked, industrialised stuff a mile off. They won't eat it, which is why they're not eating in the care homes. We also walk around with a tray of lovely looking drinks and smoothies, which they'll try." After only two or three weeks of good food, Rankin found that everyone was looking forward to meals, had a better appetite, their skin had improved and their eyes were bright.
Meanwhile, I've tried the Quick Salmon Tikka at home on a friend. Even without the Ministry helpers at hand, it was easy-peasy, and my friend swore it was delicious. Next week I'll try it out on my daughter. But what happens when I can no longer cook it, or anything else, for myself? I'm still scared stiff of growing very old and helpless. Let's hope there's a vacancy in a Barchester-type home near me, or I may have to move up to Rotherham.
