Christchurch Food Festival Education Trust has teamed up with Dorset Youth Service and Connexions to help young people not currently in education or employment to find out more about healthy eating and cooking on a budget.

Six young people are taking a six-week course at the Lighthouse Youth Centre with chef Mark Mussell from The Old Vicarage at Hinton. The aims of the course are not only to teach the skills of budgeting and purchasing food economically and cooking some key healthy dishes, but also to improve the young people’s self-confidence.

During the first three sessions Mark Mussell has shown how to cook pizzas costing around 50p each and how to make six different dishes out of two chickens by using every part of whole birds, rather than buying filleted portions. Mark even managed to get hold of some pheasants from a local shoot and showed how to pluck and bone them.

Mark said: “It’s really good fun. It’s nice to be able to teach others how easy it is to cook something from scratch rather than buying more expensive ready meals. It’s cheaper but it’s also a lot healthier.”

One of the trustees of the Education Trust, Allan Wood, visited the course and was very impressed by what he saw. “I was amazed that, on their third session, the young people were given bags of vegetables and other economical products and, in a Ready Steady Cook challenge, had to come up with a starter and main course in less than an hour. What they produced was really inventive and very tasty.

“This is exactly what the Trust is there to achieve – introducing ideas about healthy and nutritious food which people may not otherwise have come across.”

The young people themselves are clearly enjoying the project. Comments from them included: “The course is really interesting and we’ve got a good chef and a great team,” and “Jamie feeds four people for a fiver but we manage to feed eight for a fiver!”

Steve Cox-O’Rourke, Senior Youth Worker for Christchurch, said: “I am delighted that this project has taken place which illustrates partnership working on a local level. It's great to see The Lighthouse used for such a variety of activities and for the benefit of local young people.”

Finance for the course came to the Education Trust from a stall run by owners of town centre guesthouses during last year’s Food Festival.