About Nicole

Nicole Aloni

I have enjoyed an exciting, diverse career in the culinary arts. In my teens, I opened a small catering business. In my twenties, I completed the diploma course at La Varenne, Ecole de Cuisine in Paris and stayed on to work as a chef at chateaux in Burgundy. In California, I owned a natural foods restaurant, directed one of the country’s most prestigious catering operations, owned my own catering company and produced a line of gourmet food products.

For six years, I was the Director of Catering at the Los Angeles Music Center where I catered the Academy Awards four times, prepared a state luncheon for HRH Queen Elizabeth II, and produced galas in honor of three American presidents, foreign dignitaries, divas and Julia Child. Julia was the one that wowed me!

Then I opened my own company, Nicole Cottrell Productions, Inc. My company catered elegant events for clients such as the Four Seasons Beverly Hills, the Tournament of Roses and the Kirov Ballet. We also manufactured packaged foods for fine grocers like Vons/Pavilions, Gelsons, Trader Joe’s, Larry’s and Neiman-Marcus.

Writing

Ultimately all of this had provided me with plenty to talk about, so I began to write books. You may see all sorts of details about my books on their pages in this site (with links to buy through Amazon!):

Secrets From a Caterer’s Kitchen, published by Putnam in 2001
Cooking for Company, Putnam 2003
The Backyard Bartender, published in 2007 by Clarkson Potter

I’ve also written hundreds of articles for various national magazines. You might like to visit my Magazine Feature page to peruse and download PDFs of a sampling of my articles.

A Conscious Feast™

As I write this, I’m at work on a cookbook for the environmental idealist in all of us. A Conscious Feast™ is a green eating field guide and natural foods cookbook with lots of down to earth entertaining ideas that show you how to have a good time doing the right thing. You can keep track of the book’s development at www.consciousfeast.com, my new blog. As I post recipes and articles there, I hope you’ll leave your comments to help me decide which ones eventually find their way to the printed page.

Ciao, Nicole Aloni

What good is a house, if you haven’t got a decent planet to put it on?

—Henry David Thoreau