Recently I had the pleasure of traveling to Jamie's Ministry of Food in Rotherham to attend the relaunch of the centre. I was delighted to see my friend Lisa Taylor - the manager as we worked closely together when the center opened. The place has been totally transformed since I was there and they are now serving coffee and lunch as a way to ensure that the center survives. As ever, Lisa was working tirelessly cooking and ensuring that everyone was looked after and my short visit brought back wonderful memories of when Jamie's Ministry of Food began. I wish Lisa and all of the team in Rotherham all the very best. Well done on taking the initiative to turn the center into a social enterprise to ensure that the residents of Rotherham continue to learn how to cook. Jo Davison from The Star newspaper tells us more:

"THERE'S a waft of garlic mingled with freshly-brewed coffee and the mouth-watering aroma of just-baked muffins in Rotherham's All Saints' Square. A queue sniffs the air as it snakes its way across the paving stones towards the town's Ministry of Food, Jamie Oliver's first ever people's cookery school. Folk are here for a takeaway.

It sounds like a contradiction in terms; takeaways are the very things Jamie tried to wean the entire population of the town off two years ago. But this will be no ordinary carry-out lunch for the hungry shoppers. It will bear no resemblance to the fat laden-stodge a nation watched Rotherham families chomp their way through on a nightly basis when Jamie's shock-horror documentary series turned its spotlight on the town for Channel 4.

A Ministry Of Food takeaway bag contains the cheap, healthy, hand-made food The Boss - who makes everyone from prime ministers to grossly overweight Americans stop munching and listen to him - insists upon, plus the recipe, so that you can have a go at cooking what you've just eaten when you get home.

The Oliver mantra is good food and home cooking make for healthier, happier people and at The Ministry, Oliver's legacy to the town, it's alive and kicking. Many a skeptic - i.e. the majority of southerners who watched, appalled, his televised attempts to persuade Rotherham to ditch junk food and start cooking healthy meals - would expect the center to have died a death long ago and a fog of burger fat and hot sausage rolls to be weighting the chilly autumnal air of the town centre.

But the Ministry of Food and its healthy eating missive lives on. In fact, last week, the little cookery school next to Thornton's was reborn. After a substantial makeover, it's now all glossy black and gleaming red - very smart. But, more importantly, it is being run as a social enterprise and a takeaway lunchtime cafe. And therein lies its future.

"We are now self-funding," says manageress Lisa Taylor, between pouring a couple of cappuccinos for the queue and keeping her cooks supplied with fresh bags of onions and herbs bought from the greengrocer across the square.

The center opened in 2008 with £15,000 of funds from central government and the NHS. Lisa's team knew the kitty was going to run out eventually, so they practiced what they preached and kept a tight rein on the budget. Early this year they had to start charging £5.50 a time for cookery lessons, but ensured it was still giving value for money by sending pupils home with their produce, like schoolkids on baking day.

Now it's been reformed as a social enterprise, there are more funding pots to dip into. And income from the cafe - selling hand-made soup and a roll at £2.50 a time, muffins for 80p and a dish of the day from £3.25 - will keep the Ministry going. Lisa is joyous. She's been there from the beginning. No trained chef - the Oliver team specifically wanted an amateur cook to lead the project - the former merchandiser for Roseby's curtains remembers the early days, when Jamie was filming in the town and would pop in twice a week. And the storm the Ministry of Food TV series whipped up when it aired.

"People got upset because they said it made Rotherham look full of unemployed numpties," she says. "I was born and bred here and the truth is there are people like that here, but no more than in any town in the country. "And I can also tell you that an ignorance of cooking can be found in all levels of society. "In my two years teaching here, what has shocked me the most is the number of 18-year-olds from middle-class homes about to go off to university who don't even know how to crack open an egg, never mind boil it."

After the TV programme, there was a rush for courses. "The celebrity factor," smiles Lisa. "They were hoping to meet Jamie." But the bookings kept coming in long after Oliver had gone back to London. "There is gratitude now for what Jamie did for Rotherham. If he hadn't come here, this place wouldn't exist. It would be just another empty shop unit in the center of town and thousands of people wouldn't know how to feed their kids properly," says Lisa, remembering the 19-year-old girl who came, early doors

"She came because she knew she had a diet of junk food and didn't want to pass the bad habit on to her 18-month-old daughter." The young mum was shown how to make a stew, went home and made it for herself, came back the next day with a great big smile on her face and signed up for a ten-week course. "People discover that cooking isn't hard. That they can do it. And that's the message they pass on to their friends, their children," says Lisa. "Already we've taught 6,500 people how to cook healthy, economical meals at home. These people come from families on low incomes, they are elderly people, carers, young people, children even.

"Now we've got a waiting list until the end of January." The recession is probably playing a part - people have latched on to the fact that cooking from scratch is a lot cheaper than buying ready-meals and takeaways. But mostly the Ministry's ongoing success is down to Jamie's Pass It On motto. Most new clients come via word of mouth.

Hospital porter Alistair Hammond did a ten-week course and enjoyed it so much, he's recommended it to his friend Paul Scott. And Paul is keen to learn how to cook more than shepherd's pie because he wants to impress his new girlfriend. And so it goes. Every week, around 150 local people come in for advice and cookery sessions. Young single mums, adults with learning difficulties and those, like Tony Hudson, who have chanced on difficult times... all have found their lives enhanced from learning how to cook. Illness had forced college lecturer Tony to leave his job, but he renewed his confidence at the Ministry of Food.

He's just made a fresh batch of Proper Bloke's Fusilli, an Oliver twist on Italian, using skinned pork sausages. Next up, it's Jamie's Chicken Korma - without a jar of Chicken Tonight in sight. In this place 'bought-in' is a dirty word. "Cooking de-stresses you - and being able to present someone with a delicious plate of food is great for the self-esteem," says the 42-year-old, who is now a Ministry volunteer.

Samuel Booth, a former sports coach, is four weeks into his ten-week course and loving it. The 28-year-old is still recovering from a head injury which has caused sight and memory loss. The head injuries charity Headway regularly introduces its clients to cookery lessons at the bustling Rotherham school. It helps with memory, motor skills and confidence. Lisa and her team strive to prove to new recruits that cooking from scratch can not only be cheaper and healthier than ready-meals and takeaways, but also just as fast.
"We prove to them that in the time it takes for a takeaway to arrive, or for you to cook a microwave meal, you can rustle something up from fresh," she says. "It doesn't have to take an hour of your time. We teach them how to shop for food that will be used for several meals and how to cook larger portions and freeze them. "Some moan about all the washing up that cooking causes, so we teach them one-pot cooking. We've got an answer for everything!"

Jamie's finest hour

It doesn't take a genius to work out that Rotherham's Ministry of Food is the most successful recipe Jamie Oliver ever invented. Yet Rotherham's is still one of only four throughout the country. All are in the north of England - the latest opened in Newcastle last week - although a national network is the dream of the Jamie Oliver Foundation.

"We want to roll it out across the country and give everyone access to healthy-cooking lessons. The Ministry of Food is a very simple, practical and cheap way of teaching people how to cook good food. And it works," says Jamie Oliver's campaigns manager, Camilla Cameron. "I've seen young mums who don't know what celery is and men who literally don't know how to boil an egg transformed into really enthusiastic home cooks.

"They arrive feeling really anxious - they think it's going to be difficult. But after just one session, they realize it's actually fun."

About the author: Jo Davison is a journalist working for The Star newspaper.

For more information on Jamie's Ministry of Food.