About La Cucina del Sole – TEAM
La Cucina del Sole was founded by Nicoletta Tavella in 2002 and quickly became a reference point in the field of Italian cooking and culinary expertise in The Netherlands.
Today we work with a team of teachers and assistants who can insure plenty of attention to all those who come to visit our premises, whether it’s for a team building cooking session or for workshops and courses dedicated to learning the secrets of the real Italian cuisine.
TEACHERS: Nicoletta, Jasmine, Carlo, Gea, Gennaro, Paul, Rachel & Sara.
Jasmine is a pur sang cooking teacher with a lot of experience in several restaurants (she cooked at the famous Toscanini in Amsterdam). She specialises in children’s classes and is a fantastic all-round teacher for adults too. She’s our read-headed Italian firecracker who will gently but decidedly push you to do your cooking best. 🙂
Carlo is a musician – his specialty are both film music and metal! – with a passion for cooking and teaching. Very calm and precise, he knows how to give confidence to the shyest of cooks and always makes us laugh with his somewhat darkish humour. He looks like a gentleman but has the heart of a real metal king.
Gennaro has worked with us since… forever and is a very experienced and patient teacher. He knows how to solve just ANY challenge/problem and is always merry, singing in the kitchen together with Nicoletta while listening to our Italian playlists. 🙂
Gea is our youngest teacher, a very talented Tuscan girl who loves to create the most amazing dishes with simple and humble ingredients. She also works as a cook in kitchens where they recycle left-over ingredients, which makes her very creative and resourceful.
Paul is a catering chef who makes the nicest – and best looking! – dishes and knows what’s important in a professional kitchen. With him you’re in very good hands!
Rachel is another spicy firecracker, this time from Singapore! She has her own food and drinks touring company in Amsterdam and is very experienced in the kitchen due to her past as a professional horeca animal.
Sara is a lady who has flour and baking in her DNA: her family owns a bakery in Italy and she just loves to transmit her knowledge and passion for cooking to others.
Nicoletta was born and raised in Italy and after moving to the Netherlands when she was 22 she worked for a long time as an interpreter/translator.
In 2000 she started teaching Italian cooking at the Volksuniversiteit in Amstelveen. It was a nice hobby but she wanted more. Founding La Cucina del Sole was the direct consequence of this activity: one of her passions – cooking – became a real profession and she never regretted the career switch.
Her immense love for the Italian cuisine and the best wines brought her to deepen her knowledgde of the Italian cuisine further than what she learned from her family. She refined her culinary skills with some cooking master classes at the renowned “Gambero Rosso” cooking school in Rome, a sommelier diploma in 2009 and innumerable practical experiments. Her great culinary passions are the classic Italian cuisine as well as the regional and historic recipes, the healthy Italian cuisine and the international cuisine. Her very favourites are the vegetarian and the vegan cuisine: lots of delicious dishes prepared with fantasy, taste and plenty of vegetables.
Nicoletta is considered a culinary expert and she’s regularly asked for advice by the Consumentenbond (Dutch Consumers’ Union), TV programmes like Kassa! (Vara), “De smaakpolitie” (SBS6), “Herrie in de keuken” (RTL4) and “Huisje Boompje Beestje” (NTR), radio programmes such as “Dichtbij Nederland” (Radio 5) and “Winfrieds Woonkamer” (NTR), newspapers and blogs (Metro, Parool, SpecialBite, Koken Blogo, Sjakes.com and so forth) and magazines (De Smaak van Italie, Foodies, Delicious etc.).
She teaches classic, regional and healthy Italian cuisine offering single cookery workshops, cooking courses of several lessons, online cooking classes, private dining service, Italian catering, culinary advice, recipe development, presentation of cooking programs on TV and video, articles on the Italian cuisine and more. She also writes about food and wine for her own culinary blogs: Cucina del Sole (English), Cucina del Sole (Dutch), La Cucina del Sole (Dutch) and The Sunny Kitchen (English).
Her first cookbook, “Antipasti” ISBN (9059205154), was published by Veltman, and her second one, “Cucina di casa mia – Recipes of an Italian family” released by Dutch publisher Choizes won the Third prize at the Gourmand Cookbook Award in Paris in the category “Best Italian Cookbook in the World” in 2013. Her third book called “Gewoon gezond“, published in 2015, is a collaboration with nutritionist and author Rolien Scheepbouwer.
In 2011 Nicoletta presented 40 episodes of “La cucina degli altri“, her own TV cooking show dedicated to the world cuisine on the first and largest Italian food channel, “Gambero Rosso Channel” (channel 411 on Sky).
Nicoletta’s personal food preferences are simple, easy and green. She loves meat, fish and eggs and yet she tends to eat plant-based as much as she can. She consumes animal products from time to time, and preferably organic. She loves vegetables and adores to experiment with them. Nicoletta uses her creativity in the kitchen by cooking with what she has in the fridge/pantry and loves to develop recipes that are healthy, vegetarian/vegan and yet very tasty and nutritious. She finds that limiting the consumption of animal proteins is a lot better for her health and for that of our planet, so if you want to put a label on her food preferences you can definitely use the word “flexitarian”.
Some of our clients: Calvin Klein, Heineken, Booking.com, UBER, Philips, Nike, KPMG, ABN-AMRO, Albert Heijn, ING, Gemeente Amsterdam, Akzo Nobel, Microsoft, BAM Bouw en Techniek, Jacobs Douwe Egbers, TNT Nederland, Staples, RAI, Iggesund Paperboard, Diageo, Hitachi, Ernst & Young, UWV, Crédit Agricole, Euroflorist, Financieele Dagblad, EMEA, Nederlands Visbureau, Fonterra, Treatwell, Emakina, Corbion Group, McKinsey & Co., Align Technology, AHAM Vastgoed, Sanoma Media, GranFood, MTV Networks, Politie Amsterdam, Intratuin, Gelfort Vattenfall, Delta Lloyd, Carlson Wagonlit Travel and many more.
FOR PRESS BITS AND PIECES PLEASE GO TO THE DUTCH VERSION OF THIS PAGE.
