Special guests
Celia Brookes Brown
As a passionate cook and food writer, I am committed to inspiring others in the kitchen, through my books, demonstrations and tv appearances. I am driven by an acute culinary intuition, an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and a love of the theatre of cooking.
It all started when I moved to Britain in 1989 age 19. In those days, the extent of my culinary skills was opening packets and boiling the kettle. I became vegetarian around that time, and soon I started to develop an interest in cooking. This is no coincidence. I knew I couldn’t live on tins of beans and lumps of fatty cheese. As my mental perception of food became more acute — I started to see food as something other than just fuel — my sensory perception improved too. I was desperate to learn how to cook, so I could explore the creative process of using ingredients, tools and all five senses to make something delicious. The greatest satisfaction of all, I found, was giving other people pleasure through eating what I prepared. I soon discovered that food which is cooked with passion evokes passion in the person eating it.
The whole realm of food is a healthy obsession for me, and it's not limited to cooking. So much of the fun and fascination lies in shopping for fresh, high quality ingredients in farmers' markets and specialist food shops. It also includes poring over heaps of books about food and filling my head with recipes, folklore, culinary and social history. I'm also rather partial to stuffing my face. My passion became a career in vegetarian cooking, through catering, teaching and writing. I'm certainly no vegetarian "evangelist". I merely hope to show people how easy and fun it can be to cook, and meat is simply not part of my repertoire. You must have what I call a sensory relationship with what you cook. If you can't engage every sense with your ingredients, what you cook just won't taste right. Even if I were to go through the mechanics of cooking a piece of meat, it would probably taste horrible.
My approach, in a nutshell, is this: vegetarian cooking is more complex than simply slapping something on the grill. It requires more thought, more construction. I aim to encourage people to think beyond the "meat and two veg" convention, where vegetables play second fiddle, and to try to create a balance of textures, colours and flavours — then no one will miss the meat. Vegetarian food still has a boring, brown, "socks and sandals" stigma attached to it for some people. It's astonishing, but some people just don't believe a meal can be satisfying without meat on the plate. I'm working hard to do away with that perception and reinvent vegetarian food for good, this time with a sexy, glamourous image which is healthy and modern. This is my most challenging mission.
Mich Turner
Mich Turner, founder of Little Venice Cake Company has recently finished working on her second book – Fantastic Party Cakes – due to be released later this year. Mich Turner’s first book Spectacular Cakes won the national category of Best Dessert Book in the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in 2006. On sale in UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Europe. In September of 2006 she was announced as Harpers Bazaar & CHANEL Entrepreneur of the Year at a glittering ceremony in central London - the latest accolade for the celebrity cake designer. With a celebrity client list including Madonna, Pierce Brosnan, Paul McCartney, Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne, Gordon Ramsay and David Beckham, Little Venice Cake Company is the natural choice to be seen at the most spectacular parties.
As Director of Little Venice Cake Company Ltd Mich Turner founded the
Company in 1999 after graduating with an Honours Degree in Food Science
and Nutrition and working as a buyer at Harvey Nichols. Together with
her team of creative designers, supported by a talented production team
Little Venice Cake Company’s design and inspiration ensure we are
at the pinnacle of our profession. There style is very distinctive, combining
impressive, clean classical and contemporary designs with the most delicious
cakes - providing quality handmade products of the finest detail.
Supplying London's most prestigious hotels including Claridge's, The
Lanesborough, The Mandarin Oriental, The Berkeley, The Ritz, The Four
Seasons and The Dorchester,
together with working with the UK's leading party organisers and florists,
providing cakes for Celebrity, Private and Corporate occasions including
the wedding cakes for Pierce Brosnan and Keely Shaye Smith featured in
Hello! Magazine, Elvis Costello and Diana Krall held at Sir Elton John’s
house, Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, Ashley Cole and Cheryl Tweedy,
Sophie Ellis Bextor and Madonna and Guy Ritchie. We have created spectacular
cakes for the finale of X-Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, Strictly Dance
Fever and Big Brother.
Mich Turner has appeared on television including BBC Ever Wondered, This
Morning, GMTV, Channel 5 The Ultimate Celebrity Wedding and the forthcoming
Sweet Baby James with James Martin. In October 2006 we tutored Ant and
Dec for their Saturday Night Takeaway challenge. Our Company’s
designs are regularly featured in the most esteemed publications including
Vogue, Harpers and Queen, You and Your Wedding, Brides, Sunday Times
Style, Sunday Telegraph, You Magazine, Style, Wedding, Wedding Day.
Ursula Ferrigno
Ursula Ferrigno is a talented vegetarian cook with a deep love of Southern Italian food. She is half-Italian and learned to cook as a child by watching her grandmother preparing the traditional family dishes. She returns regularly to Italy, to visit family and to teach cookery. She trained in hotel catering and took an Escoffier course in Paris, before starting her own business manufacturing vegetarian recipes. She started the first vegetarian restaurant in North West England, where she devised the recipes, cooked and ran the restaurant.
An enthusiastic vegetarian, she has been principal tutor for the Vegetarian
Society, and she now runs highly popular seasonal Italian cookery courses
at the Books for Cooks Cookery School.
Having been brought up in an environment in which bread was present with
every meal, Ursula is a passionate baker, featuring bread making in her
many cookery demonstrations. With Italian breads her speciality, Ursula
teaches both professionals and amateurs to make an array of national
and regional breads from ciabatta and focaccia to volcanic stromboli.
She is the driving force behind National Breadmaking Week, designed to
promote the role of bread in the modern British diet.
She has appeared on GMTV's Saturday Disney, TVam, Granada TV, BBC North,
Good Food Live, BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme and Good Food Live for
the UK Food Channel and has been profiled in a number of magazines. Ursula
presented three programmes for HTV's cookery series Green Grow the Dishes.
Her first cookery book, The Nineties Vegetarian a colourful collection
of recipes inspired by the Mediterranean, was published in September
1994 by Merehurst, followed by Pasta, Pizza, Polenta in autumn 1995.
Real Fast Vegetarian Food which was published by Metro Books in autumn
1996, went straight into the Sunday Times paperback reference charts
and was nominated for the BBC Good Food Magazine's Cookbook of the Year.
A fourth book Ursula's Italian Cakes and Desserts was published by Metro
books in autumn 1997 and Dorling Kindersley published The Bread Book,
which Ursula co-authored.
Truly Italian was published by Mitchell Beazley
in Spring 1999 and a follow up called Bringing Italy Home was published
August 2001. She has also published Risotto for Ryland, Peters and Small
and Truly Madly Pasta was published by Quadrille. Mitchell Beazley published
Italy Sea to Sky in May 2003 Trattoria in 2004, followed by La Dolce
Vita a book of desserts in 2005 and most recently, Ursula Ferrigno's
Italian Cookery Course, 2006.
She specialises in demonstrating to the public the making of Italian
breads, Italian soups, risottos, vegetables, fruit dishes and every kind
of pasta dish.
Sophie Grigson
is a natural at teaching cookery in an informal and friendly manner and her first TV series in 1993 Grow Your Greens, Eat Your Greens won the Caroline Walker Prize (Media Category).
Sophie has written fourteen books to go with her many TV series for Channel Four and the BBC. She has had regular columns and has written articles for newspapers and magazines, and featured on many radio programmes. Her book Organic was published in 2001. Sophie was also awarded the Guild of Food Writers Cookery Journalist Award in 2001. She is currently working on her next book, Country Kitchen with Hodder, due for publication in 2003.
For more information and bookings:
Tel: + 44 (0)1443 225877
E mail: enquiries@llanerch-vineyard.co.uk
