Food Sorcery and the Manchester Trophy
It’s no secret that in recent years people have become so fascinated about food, where it comes from, how it tastes and the many different ways in which we can cook it. Here at Food Sorcery we can bring you on a exciting food journey with our cookery experiences and Masterchef style challenges releasing your inner foodie!. We work on a number of external events, we have an exciting calendar of classes for this summer.
Last week we were at the Manchester Trophy with the I.T.F (International Tennis Federation) and the LTA which was held at the Northern Lawn Tennis Club in West Didsbury it is one of the biggest pre- Wimbledon ladies’ tennis tournaments. Drawing between three and four thousand visitors over the week. The prize of $100,000 is the largest prize event in Professional Women’s Tennis in the North West of England. The tournament saw between 50-60 professional women’s tennis players competing. Now in it’s third year at the Northern Lawn Tennis club the tournament attracts players from across the globe.
At one of the highest prize female sporting events in the northwest, with such great prize money at stake eating the right balanced food is important. We took our Food Sorcery cookery school to the tournament, setting up on the tennis club’s terrace we created dishes for the Ground Staff during the event, we thought this was a perfect opportunity to tie in with the tournament and showcase what we do best with the focus on our healthy fit food.
Involving some of the Professional Tennis players during the cooking process, learning all about the dishes ingredient break down and nutritional content and also six specially selected girls from Manchester High School who are sports enthusiasts to help serve the food to the hardworking Ground Staff.
Mrs Sarah Newton, P.E Teacher at Manchester High Girls School handpicked the pupils because of their keen interest in tennis (some play at the Northern Lawn tennis club) and professional sport.
‘Bringing them today they get to learn about suitable foods when pursuing sports and healthy eating, Paella is a great balance of protein and carb it’s good food for athletes, the girls can see protein based food and what they should eating as a balanced diet’
‘They also get to see elite athletes in a relaxed, informal environment and this will hopefully be inspirational to them’
The well known and loved traditional Spanish Paella dish was chosen by our Chefs as it, zings with flavour and is a completely balanced meal as well as being surprisingly easy to make. We cooked up a large hot steaming Paella of chicken and chorizo and a vegetable one bursting with greens, we also served Poke Spoons crammed with smoked salmon, mackerel, ginger and summer greens.
Our specially created Paella’s can feed up to thirty people at one time (with our delicious meat or vegetarian options) making it a fantastic team building exercise as you can have groups working together to achieve the delicious balance of flavours. Wise advice from one of our talented Food Sorcery Chef’s Jason is ‘remember not to stir the Paella or it ends up being risotto!’.
Alongside the popular Paella we also created our take on Poke bowls which originally hail from Hawaii by serving them on spoons, comprising of diced raw fish, herbs and spices. Poke began with humble beginnings with fishermen seasoning the cut-offs from their catch to serve as a snack it has seen a big revival in 2012 with the trend continuing to grow especially in mainland America. Poke spoons are an inventive take on typical sandwich or an evening meal, that is why they are firm favourite at our events and team building classes as they are so easy to prepare and pack a flavourful punch in every bite!.
Whilst we were at the Manchester Trophy we caught up with Professional Tennis player Ingrid Neil from Florida who is playing qualifying singles and main draw doubles this week (she also won last years doubles at the Manchester 100) as she was learning about how to prep the Paella with us. She said ‘ Paella is the perfect combo of veg and carbs for Tennis players, I’ve just won my first match and to have a meal like this cooked for us is great’
Also commenting on how we were providing the food for the grounds staff she said
‘It’s so nice, without the groundskeepers we wouldn’t have a tournament, they work so hard getting the ground ready and they open and close the courts. If it’s been raining they need to prep it for two hours before we can play on it, the courts are possibly the nicest in the whole of England, the flat grass is perfectly manicured , attended classic grass’
Ingrid is staying with one of the local Didsbury residents Jenny. A number of families will accommodate the players during the course of the week in their own homes. Chatting to Jenny who has had players stay at her home in the last two years said she really enjoys it and ‘it’s nice to be able to help out’
The event was a resounding success for us with the ground staff enjoying the hard work of the Food Sorcery chefs, school girls and tennis players combined efforts to prepare their healthy lunch. Many of them asked for the recipes to take home.
Sounds like it was a fantastic week at the Manchester 100 and, we are honoured to have been a part of it.
If you have read this and now hopefully are feeling all inspired to cook healthy nutritious foods or book your next company away day we can do it all at Food Sorcery Cookery School. All the details on our amazing Fit Food Classes can be found here https://www.foodsorcery.co.uk/fit-food/ with our very own Kitchen Maverick Jan Cron.
