It is with a healthy and successful recipe for vegetable soup and semi-cooked fish that Diane Nguyen Thi To Nhu won the Maaf Taste and Health prize for artisans 2024, first in the “Recipes to keep” category. It took place on November 18 in Paris where she was one of the 12 finalists in this national competition, in front of a jury of 11 professionals, chaired by chef Thierry Marx.
Diane Nguyen Thi To Nhu is an artisan based in the town of La Ronce since 2022. She provides cooking, pastry and baking classes in her certified Atelier à la Carte laboratory. The winner of the 22e edition explains that it had “specifications to be respected, the main subject of which was a dish beneficial to health”.
Beneficial for health
She presents her draining, diuretic and satiating dish, easy to prepare and store, which can be enjoyed all year round. Made from vegetables, seaweed and organic herbs, this dashi-style broth offers many benefits: it detoxifies the body, puts the digestive system to rest and hydrates while providing essential nutrients. “My mother was a pharmacist, and no longer believing in chemistry, she turned to parapharmacy and organic products, and since I was 20 I have been accustomed to eating healthily, which is the basis of Asian cuisine, in which each spice has a virtue,” describes this Vietnamese woman by birth.
At the age of 15, she became passionate about pastry making and “in 2009, I took the opportunity to voluntarily leave the company where I worked, and I followed training by obtaining a CAP (Certificate of Professional aptitude) as a pastry chef and a second as a baker at the Ferrandi school in Paris. I specialized in traditional cuisine in one of chef Thierry Marx's schools. With her husband Serge Labail, she joined forces and opened Atelier à la Carte, first in La Rochelle, which they moved to La Ronde. She participated for the first time in this competition in 2021 where she was a finalist, and winner in 2023 and 2024.
