Charity begins in the kitchen for schools

As Peter Doyle's right-hand man at est., Gavin Carfax-Foster is no slouch in the kitchen.

But he cannot hide his admiration for fellow Stanmore Public parent Madi Morrison's self-saucing chocolate pudding.

"It was bangin', it was so good," he says. "I went into work the next day and made it for staff dinner."

Carfax-Foster's contribution to Local – Recipes and Stories from the Inner West, a cookbook published to raise money for Stanmore Public School, is no less delectable.

The est. chef says his recipe for Gavin's garden salad with quinoa and goat's cheese was inspired by a desire to encourage his three kids to eat healthily.

"I was thinking fresh, healthy ingredients and things I would cook at home," he says. "I went on a walk in the garden and looked at what was growing."

Morrison's pudding and Carfax-Foster's salad are two of the recipes from chefs, politicians, parents and students in the cookbook created by parents from Stanmore Public School.

There has been a resurgance of school cookbooks in recent years as parents have been called upon to dig deeper to fundraise for cash-strapped schools.

But Stanmore Public's recipe book is a world away from the roughly photocopied school cookbooks of yesteryear, with its 190 pages of beautifully photographed recipes, beginning with a section titled Friday Night Drinks.

The host of ABC1's Kitchen Cabinet, Annabel Crabb, whose daughter Audrey attends the Inner West school, has lent her culinary skills with recipes for passionfruit, ricotta cake and Christobel Crabb's sweet and salty nuts.

"These are my mum's excellent nuts," she writes in Local. "I still remember the family barbie at which she unveiled her first perfected batch; I ate the entire bowl."

Labor's deputy leader and the federal member for Sydney, Tanya Plibersek, offered her recipe for ocean trout pasta, which she dished up for Crabb in the first season of Kitchen Cabinet.

Plibersek says she borrowed the recipe from Tony Burke, Labor's finance spokesman and the federal member for Watson.

"I first tasted it in my Canberra office when he dropped over some leftovers," she writes. "He made it again recently when he had the cast of the Wharf Review over and I dropped in and enjoyed many laughs to complement the trout."

A number of local chefs have also contributed recipes, including Alex Elliott-Howery from Cornersmith in Marrickville (zucchini pickles), Naomi Hart and Gregory Llewellyn from Hartsyard in Newtown (Grandma's sticky buns) and Ray Reilly from The Henson Hotel in Marrickville (The Henson's mac & cheese).

For the mums and dads of Stanmore Public, the impetus to create Local was to raise money for the school's Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program, which teaches kids about growing food and healthy eating.

Carfax-Foster, whose daughters Indiah and Layla attend the school, said: "It's such an important thing for kids in the Inner West who have small backyards to see how things are grown."

But maintaining programs such as the kitchen garden is not cheap.

Nikki Zacharatos, whose children Zach and Henri attend Stanmore Public,

Zacharatos says Stanmore Public's parents decided to create the cookbook on their own rather than by the more common route of a publishing house.

She co-designed the cookbook and contributed a number of recipes, including her mum's slow-cooked lamb and homemade lavosh.

"It was actually good fun," she says. "We'd meet every week to test recipes and often I'd get friends asking me to make extra food."

Local – Recipes and Stories from the Inner West can be purchased online for $30. See stanmorepublicschool.info.

Other schools plating up

- The Black & White Cookbook, Newington College, Stanmore

- A Year in the Kitchen Garden, Bondi Public School, Bondi – Matt Moran, Bill Granger, Tetsuya Wakuda, Kylie Kwong, Neil Perry

- Recipes from the Heart, International Grammar School, Ultimo

- TKS PA Cookbook, The King's School, North Parramatta

- Crown Street Cooks, Crown Street Public School, Surry Hills – Mark Best, Kylie Kwong, Bill Granger, Alex Herbert and Luke Nguyen