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She joins the three other regional finals winners announced this week including Paul Hardy (North Wales), Garry Finan (East Midlands) and Aaron Delaney (West Midlands). The quartet of school chefs will go onto the SCOTY national final, which will take place at the LACA Main Event on 3-4th July 2024.

The competition is run by LACA and aims to demonstrate the importance of high-quality cooking in school meals. LACA vice chair Judith Gregory attended the event to watch the school chefs from Wales in action. 

Competitors must use a minimum of one Bisto product in their main course and one Premier Foods ingredient in their dessert. Judges will be looking for ‘innovative and creative ways’ the products have been used in the finished dishes.

For her main course, she cooked wholesome lentil lasagne infused with Mediterranean flavours and crispy garlic bread, served with beetroots and green. For dessert Duygu made Turkish delight inspired carrot balls with Birds custard.

Premier Foods Foodservice, producers of Bisto the main sponsor of SCOTY, said: "Congratulations to Duygu for delivering some outstanding school food in the regional finals – it was a tough judging process but she thoroughly deserves her spot in the national finals.

“You can really start to feel the excitement and buzz now as we enter the latter stages of the competition. We look forward to seeing Duygu at the national finals, where she will have another fantastic opportunity to showcase her culinary skills and put her school food on the map.”

The next SCOTY regional final will be the South West and take place on Tuesday 4th June at Weston College. Each of the regional final winners receive £100 and the chance to become the overall SCOTY champion.