The first-round heat took place after school on Thursday 17 October and the 13 contestants were tasked with cooking and serving up a main meal in just one hour.

The FutureChef competition challenges young people aged 12 to 16 who are keen to learn more about cooking, to cook their way through a series of rounds, allowing them to gain experience, meet professionals and develop their skills, all whilst learning invaluable lessons and getting an insight into the culinary industry.

All of our would-be chefs really wowed the judges, Jacqui Scott, Michael Reddish and Food Consultant Sarah King, with their culinary creations, serving up a range of tempting meals.  From the off, they worked quickly, demonstrating technical skills such as knife work and the finished plates of food looked tantalising and were full of flavour and seasoned expertly. What's more the contestants’ attention to detail was superb with plates polished, the food presented artistically and their work surfaces scrubbed.

It was a hard decision to choose between them all and the judges deliberated carefully as they argued the pros and cons of first one dish and then another.  In the end they decided that Rosie Reeve and Francesca Kelly had managed to hold their nerve and execute their dishes superbly to win the Princethorpe heat.  The pair will now progress on to the local final where they will compete against the winners of other school heats.

If successful they will then have the chance to go on to the regional final, and maybe even the national final which will be held in London, in March next year.

Commenting on this first stage of the competition, Food and Nutrition Teacher, Jacqui Scott said, “There was so much enthusiasm, team work and skill shown. They all cooked food to be proud off in a very short period of time. I have been really impressed with the level of interest in the FutureChef competition. It was really very difficult to pick our winners and the judges thoroughly enjoyed every mouthful we tried. We have two strong competitors going through to the next stages and I’m very excited to see how far they can go in the competition.”

Huge congratulations to our two worthy winners and well done to all of the participants who took part, it was an excellent effort all-round and as such all the competitors were awarded a da Vinci merit.