Last term, Year 10 Food & Nutrition students were treated to a special visit from former MasterChef contestant, now successful private chef, Mike Bartley.

Mike, who is originally from Bishop Auckland, was a contestant on the 17th Series of MasterChef, which aired in 2021. He now operates as a private chef, running the Djam Kitchen, which offers fine dining catering experiences in people’s homes, thus far catering for parties of 4 - 150 people!

Chef Bartley worked with Year 10 students in three sessions, demonstrating dishes including steak and peppercorn sauce, BBQ Korean chicken and pork gyozas. He also answered questions about his passion for cooking, his time on Masterchef, the launch of Djam Kitchen, and one of his favourite pastimes, which is foraging for ingredients in the wild such as wild garlic and sea buckthorn. Mike uses wild garlic in his own recipes, including his cheese and wild garlic scones and wild garlic tagliatelle with wild garlic pesto; and he uses the berries of the coastal plant to make a sea buckthorn curd tart.