One of Carnoustie’s most popular food and drink businesses of late is the WeeCOOK Kitchen, which has scooped up two prestigious accolades at the British Pie Awards.
The firm’s vegan pie, the Caponata Cavolfiore, took home a gold classification in the vegan pie category and won best vegan pie in the whole of the UK.
WeeCOOK’s apprentice, 18-year-old Anya Sturrock, from Monifieth, who gave up school to work for the business which is based at Barry Downs Holiday Park just outside Carnoustie, won the Young Piemaker award.
The awards were held in Melton Mowbray and Anya found out the day before that she was nominated and was asked boss to attend the awards lunch by business owner Hayley Wilkes.
Anya said: “It’s amazing to win it out of the whole of the UK. It’s even more shocking because I didn’t even know I was nominated.
“I really like working at WeeCOOK, we’re such a good little family, so hopefully I’ll be able to stay after my apprenticeship has finished.”
Anya’s award
Following the win, Hayley noted that it was Anya’s resilience that had led to her achieving the UK title.
Hayley said: “We knew Anya had won because they’d phoned us the day before to be sure she was going to be there in person.
“We were just so proud of her. She was there to represent us at the awards and she did it so well. She’s an amazing girl!
“One of the reasons I think Anya got the award was because of the resilience she has shown during her apprenticeship, which only started in February last year.
“She was given the option of either leaving school and start an apprenticeship and not do her exams, or stay on and do her exams. She made the decision to do her apprenticeship because it’s what she wanted to do.”
Apprenticeship
Starting her apprenticeship in February 2020, a month before the UK went into lockdown as a result of the pandemic, Anya had previously worked for the firm as a kitchen porter and was delighted to stay on.
Starting her career at WeeCOOK in 2019, she worked there while still at school and even got to get hands-on with the pies early doors.
She added: “I got to do some of the pie making while I was a kitchen porter, then when Hayley offered me the apprenticeship I decided to leave school to do that.
“I’ve been doing a mixture of everything. I’ve been doing the pies, making them and then packing them.
“Throughout lockdown we did deliveries all over Scotland as well and because we were so short staffed I was doing some of the deliveries myself and I’ve recently become a keyholder of the business, too.”
Best vegan pie in the UK
Adding to WeeCOOK’s success, its vegan pie was awarded the best in class, making it the top vegan pie in the whole of the UK, a category which caused some controversy in the media.
A total of 72 vegan pies were submitted, four more than the beef and any other flavour combination category.
Hayley added: “The vegan pie category got a lot of press the day before the awards because there were more entries for the vegan pie category than there were for any of the meat categories.
“I think it was discussed on Question Time and there were all sorts of people saying things like butchers and bakers had gone soft and that we were trying to be overly-inclusive.
“But we’ve always done a vegan pie, it’s not just for the awards, and felt this one was a good one so we entered it and we’re just overwhelmed that it actually won.”
Judging
Only finding out about the competition in July, Hayley and her team drove their pies to the judges in Melton Mowbray ahead of the ceremony.
They submitted five pies, including the vegan version, for the awards. Their vegetarian one was awarded silver and the chicken and bacon pie received bronze in their respective categories.
“The vegan pie has always been popular – we have two that are a Sicilian recipe and are a bit like ratatouille. There’s a vegan one, the Caponata Cavolfiore, and a veggie one, the Caponata Formaggio,” said Hayley.
“We used to just do them for markets but they were so popular we decided to put them on the menu. We also sell them on the website now and have a bespoke number made up in the shop.”