In Food and Nutrition class, we got the opportunity to learn about how to fillet a fish, in this case, a salmon.

Local chef Jaelen Steede, who used to attend Warwick Academy, came into the school and demonstrated how to make his “salmon in parchment paper”.

We learnt the tips and tricks he uses in the kitchen to speed up the preparation process and get the dish made as fast as possible.

Originally our class thought there would be no cooking involved in the week’s lesson; we were just expecting a presentation and maybe a test taste of the final product. But when Miss Knight brought half a salmon out of the fridge and it was cut into 12 pieces, we found out that each of us also got to make the full dish of salmon with lemon butter sauce and duchess potatoes.

Before making the dish, we were shown the easy way to julienne, which is making long, thin strips out of different vegetables. This skill can help us save valuable time in the GCSE class we will be taking in June.

We also found out about a trick to get the seeds out of peppers that left the whole class in awe.

While we were preparing our own salmon dish, Jaelen came around to help us with the preparation of the different aspects of the dish.

Once our salmon and potatoes were in the oven, we had the second demonstration of the day on how to make the lemon butter sauce.

The class was shown how to properly season a sauce in order to complement the dish’s flavours. Once the sauce was made, we were taught the way to make a plate of food look professional and appetising.

Towards the end of the demonstration, the ovens beeped to signal the end of our salmon and potato’s cooking.

The whole class set up their own plates and brought them to the front of the classroom where we ate our dishes together (conveniently this was lunchtime!).

Overall, the demonstration was very interesting and we all went home with so much advice to help us get the best possible GCSE grades that we can.