What is covered, week by week, and which topics each lecture draws on.
Every lecture the course claims to run gets a dated page and a teaching-team
reference. A course decides how many lectures it needs; one of them carries a
real deck. related: connects lectures to the sessions and assessments they
feed.
Why prepare at all
The case for preparation, made with time-use figures rather than assertion, and the thesis the semester is built to test.
Week 1 · 22 February 2027
Vegetables
Storage as the first decision a vegetable meets after the market: what belongs in the refrigerator and at what temperature, which producers of ethylene gas must be kept from which sensitive produce, and what the fat, protein and calorie content of a handful of common vegetables actually is.
Week 2 · 1 March 2027
Animal protein I — poultry and fish
Anatomy, handling and sourced storage guidance for chicken and fish, the first of two weeks on animal protein.
Week 3 · 8 March 2027
Animal protein II: red meat
Beef as the primary material, goat and lamb touched on briefly — the same anatomy-then-handling-then-portioning structure as poultry and fish, plus the fat, protein, calorie and iron content of the two ground-beef blends, the lamb leg and the goat that this week's calculator actually uses.
Week 4 · 15 March 2027
Spices, aromatics and oil
What galangal, shallot, onion and garlic contribute, and how chopping, crushing and slicing change the result at a cellular level — plus what determines when oil choice matters, ahead of this week's storage exercise.
Week 5 · 22 March 2027
The kitchen: tools and surfaces
Chopping boards, choppers, strainers and containers, and their maintenance — including an honest look at what board material actually does to hygiene, knife wear and particle shedding, ahead of week 7's knife.
Week 6 · 29 March 2027
The knife
Blade geometry, steel and hardness, sharpening and honing, grip and the cuts — the most detailed lecture in the course, and the one it is demonstrated rather than described
Week 7 · 5 April 2027
Guest lecture: time management under service
A visiting chef on how preparation is organised in a professional kitchen once service is timed, and what that discipline reveals about week 1's argument for preparing at all
Week 8 · 12 April 2027
Fruit
Varieties and what distinguishes them, where each is stored and why, how to choose well at the market, ripening treated as a schedulable process, and the fat, protein and calorie content of five fruits common to this course.
Week 9 · 19 April 2027
Food safety and the cold chain
The synthesis week, and the last before heat enters the course — the temperature danger zone, cross-contamination, and how long the material handled since week 2 actually keeps.
Week 10 · 26 April 2027
Cooking
The same dish, cooked twice from batches of material prepared two different ways, so that any difference in the result can be attributed to the preparation rather than to what happened at the stove.
Week 11 · 3 May 2027
Live test — the public kitchen
What the assessed practical examines: the preparation decisions made before the heat, their execution under a stated time constraint, and whether the result matches the account a student wrote in week 6.
Week 12 · 10 May 2027