My latest book for 2025 about cookery lessons in east London comprehensive.
Read about it on this link.
I taught them to cook is the first book I wrote about my food teaching
Cream Horns and Vol au Vents
jenny ridgwell
YouTube videos Nutrition Program for NEA2
These are videos I made some years ago for workshops to show how to use the Nutrition Program
They are all useful for steps for NEA 2 and give you great Food and Nutrition GCSE results!
Note – some sites don’t like links to YouTube so copy the URL and post in Google.
How to carry out nutritional analysis of a recipe
How to make the recipe healthier
How to write the recipe method
Nutrition Program for sensory analysis
My book Food Preparation Assessment Task NEA 2 will be available from mid September 2023
NEA1 Food Investigations
Hello – message from Jenny Ridgwell – For Food Teachers: my NEA1 Food Investigations 10 Tasks is available again 30th August 2024 as a PDF download – this includes the tasks from the posts below and more. Investigations were researched and written using The Nutrition Program some years ago.
Useful stuff on gelatinisation
Ideas and facts on raising baked goods
Ideas on gluten and flours to use
Gluten and pasta
Sugar in cakes and more
Evaluate foams for meringues
NEA 1 Food Investigations – 10 Tasks
I taught them to cook
If you teach cookery or learn about cookery you might like my book I taught them to cook available on Amazon.
Stories of what it was like to teach exams in the 1970s – memories of all the dishes that had to be cooked for the practical exam. Find out what life was like in London in 1970s.
Reviews
Could not put this book down, I loved home economics when I was at school & I can relate to a lot that Jenny wrote about.
Much of it made me smile and brought back memories of vesta curries and ‘exotic’ dining in Soho in Italian restaurants.
A real slice of nostalgia provoking many memories of my own lessons and early Food teaching. Jenny is so right about the exam.
The followup is underway on my Jenny Ridgwell Blog
Evaluate a food product for NEA 2
Samosas and cucumber chutney
I’ve made samosas with cucumber chutney – an example from OCR.
| Samosa and cucumber chutney evaluation | Comments |
| Good points about food product | Nice shapes, well cooked, tasty filling |
| Improvements needed | Some samosas split open and baking was uneven. |
| Sensory words – descriptors | Easy to hold, spicy, golden, tasty and crisp pastry. |
Fill in a chart like the one above.
Then decide on the Sensory Tasting words to use – Descriptors
I’ve chosen – easy to hold, spicy, golden, tasty and crisp pastry.
For the best samosa result that I want, I give each descriptor a mark out of 5.
| easy to hold | 5/5 |
| spicy | 4/5 |
| golden | 4/5 |
| tasty | 5/5 |
| crisp pastry | 5/5 |
Open the Star Profile in the Nutrition Program to evaluate your results.
Put these marks in the Rating column.
Get 2 or 3 people to taste your samosas and give a mark for each descriptor. Put their name on +Add Taster – the first one is Jenny – that’s me!
My tasters are called Jenny, Ali and Mosha. Enter their marks.
Complete the Evaluations for each Descriptor. Think about the marks the tasters have given.
Export as a jpeg.
You can put this image into your work. The Evaluations on the left show your comments. My samosas need a little more baking and more flavour with some spices.
All done!
This video shows how to make a Star Profile.
The Nutrition Program Blog 