Schoolgirl makes it to the national final of cooking competition

Fiona Fletcher, a Year 10 student at Berkhamsted School, has battled her way through three cook-offs to get to the finals of the National Rotary Club’s young chef competition.

Representing the rotary clubs of Hemel Hempstead and Berkhamsted Bulbourne, Fiona won the Dacorum Young Chef competition last November and went on to triumph over eight other local champions at the Beds, Herts and Bucks final in February.

The East of England Regional final between eight district finalists followed just two weeks later and once again Fiona was the winner to claim one of only eight places in the Filippo Berio National Young Chef final.

Local young chef competition organiser Rotarian Gavin Rody said: “Fiona has just seen off 5,993 very skilled young people in this competition. As far as I’m concerned, she has just placed both herself and culinary education in Dacorum on the map.”

In the regional final Fiona impressed judges with her sugar-spinning skills, which she had learnt from head chef at Ashridge Business School Paul Patterson. It took her three attempts to get it right but the final result was an impressive sugar spiral and basket.

The cooking competition national final will be held on Saturday, April 25 in Wrexham.