Want to create fabulous homemade Italian dishes? Then you may like to spend a few hours with Giuliana Cortese at her cookery school in Cuddington. Alison Isherwood of the Thame Food Festival reports.

You love Italian food. You love cooking Italian food at home. But you would like to venture beyond pastas and pizzas. Me too. So that’s why I signed up for a day course at CiCi CoCo.

CiCi CoCo is a home cooking kitchen run by Giuliana Cortese. Giuliana first came to the UK to work with fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. While in London, she would recreate her mother’s lasagne recipe and bring it into the design studio. Earning her the nickname of ‘Lasagna’.

Later Giuliana, who grew up in Friuli, her mother a northern Italian and her father a southern Italian, decided to make her passion for great Italian cooking a career in itself. In 2010 she set up CiCi CoCo in her own kitchen in Cuddington on the Buckinghamshire-Oxfordshire border. Her aim was to introduce people to the joys of fantastic artisan Italian dishes. “Although the philosophy and style of the kitchen is Italian,” she explains, “we used local products and ingredients.”

The CiCi CoCo kitchen soon won not just customers but awards as well. In 2011, it was given a Great Taste Award for its Lasagna Alla Bolognese, and another three – for its speciality Lasagna, Caponata and Heritage spelt and Rivet Wheat fresh pasta – in 2012. It was also voted best independent producer in the Muddy Stiletto Awards in 2013.

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A visit to an Italian cookery school appeared first on CuiZine Magazine.

Nelson Street Restaurant, which has been winning itself quite a reputation for its imaginative, beautifully prepared dishes, is owned and run by three school friends. Louis Myhill is the head chef; Josh Sheppard is a chef and in charge of new business; while Mike Norris is the restaurant manager.

The three had all embarked on different careers. Josh was a broker in the City. Mike was working in an office. Louis was the only one in the restaurant business, a chef at the prestigious Ivy in London. It was Louis who first mooted the idea that they set up their own restaurant

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The Buckingham restaurant started by three school friends appeared first on CuiZine Magazine.

Throughout his career, Raymond Blanc has not just been an inspirational conjuror of sensational food but an inspirational teacher in the kitchen too. A menu full of the UK’s most renowned chefs have
had the opportunity to hone their skills, their dishes, their balances of textures and flavours under
Raymond’s tutelage.

To celebrate 30 years of Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Raymond Blanc is set to welcome back members of his brigade to host a series of Diner des Protégés at his two Michelin Star Oxfordshire restaurant.

Throughout 2015, guests joining the Diner des Protégés evenings will be able to savour the acclaimed chefs’ signature creations during an evening of gastronomic excellence.

The food of Belmond Le Manoir will be reflected in each menu, which will include an introductory course from Raymond Blanc, as well as one from Executive Head Chef Gary Jones and Pastry Chef Benoit Blin.

You can read the full article in the Spring 2015 edition of CuiZine.

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Raymond Blanc invites former chefs back to celebrate appeared first on CuiZine Magazine.

When Michelin-starred chef, Michael North, bought the Nut Tree in Murcott, he wasn’t simply investing in a pub; he was, as he tells Julian Foster, coming home.

Twelve years ago, Michael North and his partner, Imogen, were visiting the picturesque Oxfordshire village of Murcott. Out for a walk, the couple, in the middle of one of those ‘what would we really like to be doing’ conversations, found themselves stood outside the Nut Tree pub, thatched, oak-beamed and marinaded in age-old traditions of hospitality. “Own that pub,” they both said, smiled and wandered on.

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