Our Teachers

Ursula Ferrigno is a talented cook and a prolific food writer with a deep love of Italian food. She is half-Italian and learned to cook as a child by assisting her grandmother preparing the traditional family dishes.,She returns regularly to Italy to visit family and to teach cookery. She writes for numerous food magazines including Taste Italia American Gourmet, Olive and Good Food, RSJ Restaurant, Books for Cooks, Caldesi and Divertimenti. Ursula is also a passionate baker. She teaches both professionals and amateurs to make an array of national and regional breads from ciabatta and focaccia to volcanic stromboli.

Sarah is a graduate of Leiths School of Food and Wine and the senior teacher at the highly regarded cookery school, The Cooking Academy in Rickmansworth. She also teaches basic cookery for the charity, One Can Trust.

Sarah’s culinary background is in event catering and supper clubs, she is an avid fan of all things spicy and a lover of the cuisines of India, Asia and Mexico. In 2018 she contributed recipes and home economy to the Indian cookery book “A Cupboard Full of Spices”

When not cooking or teaching Sarah can be found foraging the hedgerows for blackberries and rose hips et al or tending lovingly to her vast array of homegrown tomatoes and chillies- some of which will undoubtedly find their way into the classes

A very warm welcome to Pedro – I am going to let him introduce himself.

I was definitely influenced by my grandparents, my father’s parents. They had what I would call a backyard farm. They kept turkeys, ducks, goats and a pig as well as an allotment. I spent a lot of time helping them out with the chores, including milking and making cheese and of course learning all about foraging!

I am a small bijou producer and customers like that because there is no farming intensification here. It’s just me, the sheep, the chickens and the goats and I love it.

I have been making cheese for about 8 years now, starting with the basic soft cheeses and now I’m making a range of cheeses. Most of my cheese is eaten by the local community, sometimes in exchange for other goodies such as vegetables, a hot meal, wine whatever is on offer!

I am very much looking forward to imparting all my knowledge to you all!

After graduating from Leith’s, I have cooked in many different places: ski chalets, a villa in Tuscany, hotels, catering companies, private cheffing and as the in-house chef for an executive search firm for many years before finding my passion for teaching.

My passion is food. Any kind of food! I love sharing my passion and knowledge with my class and hope they feel as inspired as I do at the end of the class.

Having previously worked at restaurants in Brighton focussing on fire cookery, Cat Rochefort is now a freelance chef specialising in cooking over fire. She finds her inspiration in nature, using foraged and seasonal ingredients to create beautiful dishes that harness the smoky, charred flavours of cooking over flame and charcoal.

She can also be found grilling at Hunter Gather Cook foraging school, The Salt Box and teaching BBQ classes at Abinger Cookery School in Surrey.

Alexina is a cook who researches, writes and talks about flavour: the science of it, how it appears across different cultures (she is herself mixed race) and how to translate this into delicious food in the kitchen.

Alexina was a finalist on MasterChef 2021 where she demonstrated her enthusiasm for grapefruit, love of liquorice and intense dislike of mint chocolate. Bitter, published by Vintage, Penguin Random House, is her debut cookbook and the first in a series centred around the five tastes (bitter, sweet, sour, salty and umami).

Hi! My name is Patricia Judez, and I am a ceramicist based in Oxford, with over eight years of experience in the field. I specialize in creating pieces that are both functional and decorative, combining the two to create truly unique pieces.

My passion for ceramics was ignited when I was an intern at Illyria Pottery in Walton Street, Jericho. I had the opportunity to work with a skilled ceramicist and learn the craft, and I spent three years there, helping out in the studio and perfecting my skills.

Whether it’s a hand-thrown vase, a sculptural piece, or a decorative plate, I take great care to ensure that each piece is made to the highest standard.

My goal is to bring beauty and functionality into people’s homes and lives, and I feel truly lucky to be doing what I love every day.

https://www.instagram.com/pattandpott/

Food has always been a joyful focus in Aliyah’s life – growing up within multiple cultures and surrounded by incredibly talented cooks in her family.

Aliyah set out in pursuit of her passion for food professionally after a 20 year corporate career. She has completed a diploma at Leiths School of Food and WIne, and as part of her personal learning journey spent time in a number of professional kitchens, including most recently with the pastry team at Le Manoir aux Quatre Saisons.

Aliyah’s prior experience focused on the people side of businesses with an emphasis on learning, development and coaching which naturally lends her talents to teaching with an engaging and technically sound approach.

Aliyah approaches all things baking with precision and understanding of the science and yet has a preference to cook savoury food with whatever she has on hand, primarily to prevent food waste.

With a successful Interior Designer career, Emily Wakefield has spent many years developing her sense of style, colour and texture creatively as a designer as well as a freelance artist, more recently, specialising in abstract paintings and wall murals.

Food and it’s importance to health has been an underlying love of Emilys since reading a Patrick Holford’s book at University “Optimum Nutrition Bible’. This sparked an even greater passion into not only her love of cooking but also into the power that foods can hold with healing the body and perhaps more importantly in aiding prevention of many illnesses and disease.

After years of reading about nutrition, Emily studied Naturopathic nutritional therapy at CNM in Bristol in 2018 and qualified as a nutritional therapist in 2020. She now combines all her interests and continues to paint, cook and concoct healing delicious nutritional remedies daily.

@scribbling.on.walls
@the.two.thing