Join the best Italian Food Academy in Africa: Residential courses.

Do you want to become an Italian chef?

Do you want to improve your chef career?

Do you want to learn the best cuisine in the world?

Do you want to get more money out of your job?

Do you want to be a real Italian entrepreneur?

Do you want to realize your dreams?

Join the best Italian Food Academy in Africa:
Residential courses.

Do you want to
become an Italian chef?

Do you want to
improve your chef career?

Do you want to
learn the best cuisine in the world?

Do you want to
get more money out of your job?

Do you want to
be a real Italian entrepreneur?

Do you want to
realize your dreams?

We are creating our first short courses for everyone who wants to learn the main recipes and preparations of Italian food culture! An intensive course of a few weeks to learn the basics of Italian cuisine, for your personal and professional future! Leave us our contacts, we will reach out for you once the courses will be starting!

Join the first professional cooking course of Italian cuisine in Africa

Come and join in the first Italian Food Academy, where everyone can learn cooking true Italian style followed by an Italian chef known nationwide. Whether you’re an amateur or professional with a passion for Italian cuisine, you can’t get a more authentic education anywhere else: the school offers professional courses for both amateurs and young chefs who want to learn the art of Italian cuisine.

Residential courses

Our 3-month residential course in Nairobi.

Choose how you want to become a Chef expert in Italian Cuisine

Residential Courses

You will attend our Italian cuisine course at our school in Nairobi at Utawala.

You will become a professional chef in italian cuisine in 3 months, learning about 100 recipes.

Our classes are held in a modern kitchen with practical method, offering the opportunity to fully immerse yourself in the study of Italian tradition and cuisine.

Thanks to the collaboration of Italian chefs, we have a database of more than 100 recipes of typical dishes from all over Italy.

Have a look at these samples to understand what you will be taught about.

Chicken in “Campagnola” way

Simple

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour and 20 minutes
For 4/6 people

Ingredients

1 kg of chicken cut in pieces
1 celery
1 carrot
1 onion
2 potatoes
200 g of peas (fresh or frozen)
300 ml of tomato pulp
Extra virgin olive oil
1 knob of butter
Basil
salt
pepper

Method

Mince celery, carrot and onion and let them wither in a casserole along with olive oil and butter. When they turn transparent, add chicken. Cook the chicken for some minutes and then add tomato pulp and mix.

Let it boil, cover and cook for about 30 minutes at medium heat. Add the peeled potato – which you have cut in small cubes –, peas and basil. Add salt and pepper and cook for 20-30 minutes. Serve immediately.

Crostata with apricot jam

Simple

Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 40 minutes
Resting time: 1 hour in the fridge
For 6/8 people

Ingredients

For a cake tin of 22 centimetre in diameter:

200 g of flour
80 g of butter
110 g of sugar
1 egg
1 yolk
Lemon zest
salt
500 g of apricot jam

Method

To prepare the shortcrust pastry, let the butter turn smoother at room temperature so that it is easier to mix it with other ingredients. Mix flour and sugar and shape them into a fountain. Cut the butter into small cubes and put them in the middle of the fountain, add the egg and the yolk, a hint of salt and the lemon zest.

Mix the ingredients using your hands until the mixture is uniform. Wrap the pastry using the clingfilm and let it rest in the fridge for at least one hour.

Flatten the pastry on a table covered with flour, so that it is 5 mm thin. Take a cake tin of 22 centimetres in diameter and cover its bottom and sides using the pastry.

Take the pastry that comes out of the borders away, knead it, wrap it using the clingfilm and put it in the fridge. Using a fork, pierce the pastry inside the cake tin.

Cover the pastry with the jam, levelling it. Flatten the pastry you have kept away so that it is 5 mm thin and cut it into stripes. Use a cutting wheel to cut the pastry and remember that the stripes should be 1 centimetre large.

Put the stripes on the jam forming a grate. Bake the crostata in the pre-heated oven at 180° for 40 minutes. Let it cool and serve.

Focaccia with oregano

Simple

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Resting time: 2 hours

Ingredients

For the dough

500 g of white flour
320 g of water
½ cube of brewer’s yeast
1 teaspoon of Acacia honey
30 g of extra virgin olive oil
oregano
salt

For the emulsion

50 g of extra virgin olive oil
50 g of water
15 g of salt

Method

To prepare the dough, pour the room-temperature water into a bowl and then melt the yeast together with the honey inside it. Add flour and start to mix. When the mixture is quite lumpy, add oil and salt

While the dough is in the bowl, make it uniform by pulling its sides apart and then bending them back to the centre using your hands.
The dough will be a little sticky. Let it rest for about 10 minutes – in this way, it will be more elastic.
Drop the dough onto a flat surface covered with flour. Form a ball and put it again into the bowl. Grease the dough, cover the bowl with a piece of clingfilm and let it rest for about 50 minutes.

Take the dough, drop it again onto the surface and flatten it using your fingers. Cover a sheet pan – 45×35 cm – with a piece of baking paper greased with extra virgin olive oil and then put the dough onto it. Let it rest for about 10 minutes. Drop a little bit of oil.

Using your fingertips, flatten the dough, pulling its sides towards the sides of the sheet pan. Cover your focaccia with a piece of clingfilm and let it rest for about 15 minutes. In the meantime, turn on the oven at 250°.

For the emulsion, in a bowl mix oil, water and salt. Mix quickly till you obtain an emulsion. Take the focaccia, pierce it with your fingers – don’t flatten it – and brush the emulsion onto its surface.

Garnish the focaccia using a lot of oregano. Put it onto the lowest level of the oven and bake it for 10 minutes. Put the focaccia out and then bake it on the middle level of the oven for 10-15 minutes, until it turns goldish. Put it out of the oven, let it cool and then serve.

Fried Pizzelle

Simple

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Resting time: 2 hours and a half
For 4 people

Ingredients

FOR THE DOUGH

350 g of plain flour
250 ml of room-temperature water
7 g of dehydrated brewer’s yeast
10 g of table salt
Semolina

FOR THE DRESSING

600 g of tomato coulis
1 garlic clove
Extra virgin olive oil
basil
salt
pepper
Parmesan cheese grated in flakes
peanut oil (to fry)

Method

To prepare the dough, in a bowl put flour, yeast, water and start to knead using the stand mixer at low speed

Using the coated dough hook, keep on kneading until the dough comes off the sides of the bowl – it takes about 15 minutes – and add salt. Shape the dough into a ball, wrap it with the clingfilm and let it rise until it doubled – about 2 hours.

Divide the dough into small balls weighing 60 grams each. Using a rolling pin, flatten them to obtain some discs of 10 centimetre in diameter. Cover a tray with semolina, put the discs onto it, cover using clingfilm and let them rise for 30 minutes.

In the meantime, prepare the dressing. In a casserole cook garlic and oil and when garlic turns goldish take it away. Add tomato coulis, salt, pepper and cook for 15 minutes or until the water of the sauce has evaporated.

Fry few pizzelle at a time in a casserole with hot oil at 170°, until their sides are goldish. Strain them using a skimmer, dry them using paper towel and dress using the tomato sauce.

Garnish with grated parmesan cheese and its flakes, a leaf of basil and serve while they are still hot.

Genovese Pesto sauce

Simple

Preparation: 10 minutes

Ingredients

Garlic, without the inner parts of its cloves
Pine nuts
Basil
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Pecorino cheese
Parmesan cheese 24 months

Method

Clean basil leaves and garlic cloves; then blend them along with oil, pine nuts and salt. Blend the ingredients until they are completely minced. Keep on mixing until you obtain a creamy sauce.

Put the mixture into a bowl and add grated cheese. Dress pasta with pesto sauce and mix, away from the stove. If you must save pesto for a long time, do not add cheese, because it might turn acid.

Pasta alla Norma (Pasta at Norma style)

Simple

Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 40 minutes
For 4 people

Ingredients

2 eggplants
8 red beefsteak tomatoes
Garlic
Oil
Basil
Salted Ricotta cheese
320 g of Rigatoni pasta
Salt
Sugar
Pepper
Peanut oil (to fry)

Method

Cut tomatoes into cubes and put them in a pan with oil and garlic. Let them turn smoother for 20 minutes with basil, salt, pepper and a half teaspoon of sugar.

Then take tomatoes away from stove and blend them in a food mill. Put tomato sauce in a pan and cook it until its water has evaporated.

Cut the eggplants into cubes and fry them. Drain them so that there is no more oil inside and over them.

Cook pasta and dress it with tomato sauce. Serve it and add the eggplants and grated Ricotta cheese in each dish.

Risotto with saffron

Medium difficulty

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 15/18 minutes
For 4 people

Ingredients

240 g of Carnaroli rice
40 g of minced and stewed onions
2 l of chicken’s bouillon
50 cl of white wine
100 g of butter
100 g of Grana Padano
20 g of extra virgin olive oil
400 mg of saffron threads
salt

Method

Toast rice with oil for 3/4 minutes at low heat. Add white wine and let it evaporate. Add the hot bouillon, the minced and stewed onion and salt.

After about 10 minutes, add the saffron threads. Mix and cook until rice is “al dente”.

Take the rice off the stove, stir in butter and in Grana Padano. Serve with grated cheese.

Scaloppine with lemon

Simple

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
For 4 people

Ingredients

800 g of thin bottom sirloin steaks
1 lemon
1 garlic clove
flour
extra virgin olive oil
1 knob of butter
salt
pepper
parsley

Method

Put the bottom sirloin steaks between two pieces of baking paper and tenderize them using a meat tenderizer. Otherwise, you can ask your butcher to do it for you. Cover both steaks’ sides with a little bit of flour and cook them in a pan together with garlic, oil and butter

Grate the lemon zest and keep it away. Squeeze the lemon and pour the juice through a strainer onto the steaks. Add salt and pepper, then keep on cooking at low heat for some minutes.

Serve Scaloppine with lemon adding a little bit of pepper – which you will mince in that moment –, the grated lemon’s zest and a little bit of parsley.

Torta paradiso (Paradise cake)

Simple

Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 30-35 minutes
For 8/10 people

Ingredients

125 g of smooth butter
125 g of powdered sugar
2 eggs
2 yolks
80 g of flour
80 g of corn starch
4 g of yeast for cakes
Grated lemon zest

Method

Keep butter at room temperature for 2 hours or make it softer in the microwave oven for 20 seconds. In a bowl mix butter with powdered sugar.

When the mixture is foamy, add yolks and eggs and mix. Sift the flours together with yeast.

Keep on mixing until all ingredients are melded. Add the grated lemon’s zest and keep on mixing until the mixture is foamy. Take a cake tin, grease it using butter and cover its bottom and sides with flour. Drop the mixture into it. Level the surface of the mixture using a knife. Bake in the oven at 175° for 30/35 minutes.

Take the cake out of the oven, let it cool and then garnish it with powdered sugar.

Job placement

Thanks to our awesome courses in Italian food preparation and thanks to our official certificate, you will be able to easily enter in the Food and Beverage industry as a professional chef specialised in Italian cuisine.

As lots of Kenyan restaurants, lodges and resorts are offering Italian food choices in their menus, the demand for quality Chefs specialised in Italian cuisine has increased in the past few years.

Our courses are structured so to give you the best practice in Italian food preparation and to share Italian culture with you.

We have prepared a big data base of all Kenyan restaurants that are looking for Italian cooks. We will help you to apply for internships and stages to train yourself and hopefully get a job in the tourism industry

About us

Alice for Children by Twins International, an Italian NGO, with three primary schools in slums and two children’s homes in Kenya, has developed the Italian Food Academy as a tool to give kids the possibility to find a job in the grey area of Kenyan wide unemployment.

Now after two year of success of the Academy, we have developed an official school directed to Kenyan professionals or amateurs.

Alice Italian Food Academy is a real chance to learn a job and gain economic and social independency.

www.aliceforchildren.it