Tag: Divertimenti

A two Michelin starred evening with the finest of French fare…

.Reading time 7 minutes.

It’s not often you get the chance to have your dinner cooked for you by a two Michelin starred chef so when the opportunity arose for a seat at Claude Bosi’s table during ‘An Evening With…’ at the Divertimenti Cookery School on Brompton Road, it was something I’d have climbed over my own sister to be a part of…

…luckily it didn’t come to that. I still have a sibling who’s on speaking terms with me and when I arrived to find there would be only 6 other people there with me, it became even more of a charming & personal interaction with this hugely talented & passionate chef.

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Chef Bosi, a classically trained alumnus of several of France’s finest restaurants including L’Arpege and Restaurant Alain Ducasse, is perhaps best known in the UK as the culinary genius behind Hibiscus, a Michelin star appointed restaurant based first in Ludlow and then London, and his inventive & respectful takes on French cuisine have won him fans both here and across the seas.

Five courses – each paired with wines – were prepared in front of us by Bosi and his two sous chefs in a kitchen that was unbelievably calm, organised & confident, traits of working that he instills in his kitchens. Processed with VSCO with f2 preset

Comte & Cheddar Gougeres were our starting point for the evening’s feasting; rustic nuggets of perfectly cooked, soft centred, crispy edged cheesey goodness, each one lightly hand dusted with freeze dried cheese powder. There are times when you want party food to look aspirational and times when you simply want it to look comfortably welcoming and these plum sized, choux pastry dollops were the ultimate in homely-meets-chic appetizers, marrying beautifully with a glass of cold, crisp champagne.

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Flavouring your world Japanese for an evening…

.Reading time 10 minutes.

If there’s one thing I love, it’s eating food.

Ok well, it’s actually eating food and cooking food, my bad.

And learning about food…ok, so if there’s three things that I love, it’s learning about and cooking and eating food.

Divertimenti is a cook shop in the beautiful beating heart of South Kensington, an area of London whose museums and galleries and restaurants make up some of the prettiest streets in the capital. As well as being the sort of store that makes you want to buy things you never even knew you needed until you saw them – FYI that is the entire range of cookie cutters – its basement is also home to some of the hardest working staff in London’s cooking schools and it was here that I recently found myself swept away to the Far East courtesy of a Japanese canapes workshop and the very talented Reiko Hashimoto.

Kyoto born Reiko has been teaching Japanese cooking to students in London for over a decade following time spent travelling the world with the airline industry and living in the global melting pot that is Hong Kong. Setting up her own cookery school ‘Hashi’ thirteen years ago has allowed her to inspire both novice & experienced food lovers and her first book was released in 2011 with a sibling on its way. Normally based in Wimbledon, it was absolutely delightful to spend a few hours in the company of her and four fellow food enthusiasts as we learnt a little about the ingredients, the dishes & the cooking techniques of Japan in Reiko’s first Divertimenti class.

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My favourite food of the night was this incredibly warm, comforting & moreish take on the traditional Italian ‘arancini’ using miso and mozzarella. Cooking everything – rice, mushrooms, leeks & sauces – together in the same pot made it reassuringly simple and I can’t tell you how delicious the savoury, earthy flavour of the miso was when paired with the freshness of the leeks and the nuttiness of the rice.

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Panko breadcrumbs should be in every home cupboard; try them once and lament at how many years you spent using the pale imitation churned out by other brands. Bigger & flakier & sturdier than their counterparts, these are breadcrumbs that give you a gorgeous crunchy texture on anything you coat them in and deep fry and, word to the wise here, you will want to coat & fry everything you can get your hands on once you start…you have been warned.

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A crispy, golden crumb exterior that gives way to soft & yielding umami flavoured rice with a nugget of molten mozzarella at its core…that my friends, is how you take a classic and flip it to reveal something pretty delicious underneath. Read More

New year, new class, new cooking school…

.Reading time 7 minutes.

Hands up who loves a brand new year? Come on, let me see them! Okay so maybe not the cold & wet bleakness of January…and maybe not the too tight clothes & the too empty wallets that follow Christmas with alarming annual regularity…but the flawless, spotless, pristine pages of a new diary, a new week and a new year are pretty wonderful, right? I don’t make resolutions – call me crazy but I’ve never felt the urge to put myself under extreme amounts of pressure to start delivering something new at the hardest time of the year! – but I do like the thought of filling my life with new experiences and if they’re connected to something delicious that I can eat, so be it!

With that in mind, last week I ventured out to try a cooking demonstration at the Divertimenti Cooking School on the Brompton Road, a few doors down from the twinkly-against-a-black-velvet-sky lights of Harrods & Harvey Nichols, y’know, the cheap end of town…

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