St Julie’s young chefs dish up tasty desserts

Year 9 students at St Julie’s High School in Woolton received a hands-on culinary experience as a celebrated Liverpool chef paid a visit.

Gary Manning, co-owner and executive chef of the 60 Hope Street Group led year 9 students through a workshop exploring different presentation techniques.

Gary walked the students through the preparation of his favourite artisan desserts before demonstrating a wide range of techniques used in the restaurant business for presenting food in beautiful and engaging ways.

As well as offering top techniques to students as part of their curriculum, Gary also spoke about food provenance and how utilising local produce is good for the culinary experience, good for the environment and good for business.

After learning the best tips and techniques from Gary, the students turned their hand at food presentation and created beautiful plates of food. When the workshop was complete Gary had the difficult job of judging the completed dishes.

He said: “I’m really grateful to St. Julie’s for inviting me as I gained a great deal of satisfaction from the day, especially seeing how all the students were so engaged in what they were learning.”

Tracy Whitfield, who suggested the idea to Gary after a visit to 60 Hope Street said: “We’d like to say a huge thanks to Gary for making time in his very busy schedule, especially around graduation week in the city to come and work with our students.

“They were all hugely inspired and will be putting all of the top tips they learned into practice!”