Chef-Lecturer's Eastern Experience
23 December 2011
Gary Hammond preparing a dish on his recent trip to China
Eastern cooking met western flavours when Buxton College's Chef Lecturer travelled to China to deliver a cooking masterclass recently.
Gary Hammond spent a week at Beijing's International Vocational Education School, one of its international collaborative partners.
During the week-long stay Gary taught Chinese students the basics of classic western recipes and flavours, exchanged ideas and techniques with the school's Chinese chefs and picked up some new traditional Chinese cooking techniques to bring back to his students at Buxton College.
He also demonstrated some cooking for the EU Commissioner for Education, Culture Multilingualism and Youth - Androulla Vassiliou - who paid the School a visit the very same week.
Gary said: "It was wonderful to be invited to China and to have the chance to share some western cookery techniques with their incredibly enthusiastic students. Luckily demonstrations overcame any language barriers we had. The learning was reciprocal so I brought back some new tricks and recipes to teach to my Professional Cookery students."
Buxton College is part of the University of Derby, which has worked collaboratively with Beijing International Vocational Education School since 1999. It is hoped that the College will receive delegations of Chinese students in the next few years.
For more information about Professional Cookery programmes at Buxton College visit www.buxtoncollege.ac.uk
