heart of england cooks

To find a cook in your area we have listed our cooks details below. For more information on available events or to book an activity please contact us at the farm on 01803 762019 or our main customer services number 0845 600 2311. Many of our cooks also run their own businesses - to enquire about availability for your own special event please email them direct.

The Cooks

Lisa Sare

Cooking experience: With a passion for real food & after a career in Retail of 20 years & moving from London to Suffolk, Lisa started her own catering business seven years ago. Recently she has opened 'the Cooks Shed' in Woodbridge. This is a relaxed space for workshops, event catering, private dining, children's parties, business dining, lunch & supper clubs. Favourite vegetable: Courgette, as there are so many ways of cooking with it. Cooking tip: Don't despair if you have a glut of vegetables or some have past their best, make wonderful vegetable stock by adding them to onions, carrots bay leaf, black peppercorns. Add water and simmer for an hour. Sieve & pour into suitable freezer containers or ice cube trays. Area covered: Suffolk. Contact: thecooksshed@btinternet.com

Isabel Hood

Cooking experience: Isobel was brought up in Mexico, her cosmopolitan childhood guaranteeing a lifelong love of food and a deep interest in the cuisines of the world. Sixteen years of running a catering business in London, with current work as a food writer and freelance private chef with many famous clients have further consolidated this glorious and delicious obsession with food, leading Isobel to immerse herself in the cuisines of the world and to delve into their origins and traditional or indigenous ingredients. Favourite vegetable: aubergine, exotic and often underused. Cooking tip: cooking an aubergine whole over an open flame, as on a BBQ or a hob ring, gives it a wonderfully smoky flavour. Area covered: Sussex Contact: isabel-hood@lineone.net

Faye Baxter

Cooking experience: A qualified nutritionist and trainer, with a diploma in whole food and macrobiotic cookery. Faye teaches a range of courses including Wholefoods, Herbs & Spices, The Diet Chef— Cooking to a Healthy Weight, Weight Management, Health Awareness, Vegetarian cookery, Japanese and Macrobiotic cookery, Food & Mood. She also runs Crafty Cooks, a pre school cookery course for children, as well as undertaking nutrition audits and menu design on behalf of companies and institutions to help improve standards in catering and implement healthy eating strategies. Faye also provides dietary advice, menu plans and cookery coaching for individuals with health problems. Favourite cuisine: Japanese Cooking tip: When boiling vegetables, boil the the water (approx 1-2 inches) first and then put the veg into the boiling water, cover and simmer for 5-10 mins ( depending on type of veg). Add salt right at the end. The helps preserve the vitamins. Plus keep the vegetable water for later use in a sauce or gravy as this is where the minerals from the cooked vegetables will go. Area covered: Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, East Anglia and is able to travel elsewhere in the UK. Contact: faye@ingredients4health.co.uk

Tine Roche

Cooking experience: Brought up in rural Scandinavia and taught to cook and eat with the seasons, and waste nothing, Tine has developed a holistic approach to teaching cookery, encompassing being a responsible food consumer, shopping smart for low waste, saving time and cooking simply and cheaply. She appears regularly on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, has appeared on BBC Look East discussing Resourceful Cooking, and been featured in Olive Magazine. In 2008 she fulfilled a long held dream of setting up the Cambridge Cookery School (having completed her professional chef’s training at Leiths), with a mission to get people reconnected with skills that have been sadly lost, and passing on some of her own knowledge and enthusiasm for simple seasonal cooking. Favourite vegetable: Wild mushrooms. Cooking tip: Bottle & pickle to make the most of a glut of food. Area covered: Cambridgeshire. Contact: learntocook@cambridgecookeryschool.com