Cooking for a cause with Manu Feildel

With overseas travel off the cards for the foreseeable future, and some of us still unable to dine out, it’s time to get creative in the kitchen and treat your friends and family to some internationally-inspired home-cooked fare.

While cooking for loved ones is rewarding, food always tastes twice as good when it’s doing good. That’s why Breast Cancer Trials is encouraging food lovers all over Australia to stay in and entertain this August, to support breast cancer research.

Breast Cancer Trials is Australia’s largest and most respected clinical trial groups in Australia, conducting research into the prevention and cure of breast cancer and helping to save millions of lives worldwide through research collaboration.

The organisation has created the 3 Course Challenge to help raise much-needed funds, and is calling all bon vivants to join in, and help them cook up a cure for breast cancer.

This challenge of life-saving proportions (or should that be portions…) invites you to whip up a three-course French menu, seek donations from friends and family and host a dinner party with a difference. Of course, cooking French cuisine is no easy feat, so if you don’t think you have the culinary skills to pull it off, don’t stress – French celebrity chef Manu Feildel will be right by your side to help you.

Feildel has created a special menu for the event and will show all registered dinner party hosts how to cook it in a livestreamed interactive cooking class to be held on August 29. He’ll provide you with everything you need to make your dinner party a success, including tips, tricks and step-by-step instructions. You’ll also have the chance to interact with Feildel, asking him questions about his French menu throughout the livestream.

Registered hosts will also be provided with all the extra elements they need to create a special French-themed feast, including access to a French music playlist on Spotify, templates for invitations and French games to play.

Feildel is passionate about supporting breast cancer research as his own mum, Evelyne, was diagnosed with the disease eight months ago. Fortunately, Evelyne’s cancer was detected early and after chemotherapy treatment, she’s doing well. However, watching his mother go through treatment was a challenging time for Feildel.

“Chemotherapy is a smack in the face,” he says. “It really takes over the body.”

It was his mum who sparked Feildel’s love for cooking while raising him in Nantes, France. The chef claims she taught him everything he knows about food and cooking. His first memories of the kitchen include watching his mum chopping apples for a sweet tarte tatin, while delighting in the taste and scent of her cooking.

It’s the pleasure of those moments that Feildel has spent his life trying to recreate, and he hopes the 3 Course Challenge will offer food lovers all over Australia the chance to share in that pleasure, while also raising some much-needed funds for a very important cause.

Pre-registration is now open, so head to 3coursechallenge.com.au for more info, and start planning your très magnifique dinner party.