Masterchef finalist Sara Danesin Medio cooks up a new enterprise from home

SARA Danesin Medio is chopping aubergines in her kitchen. It’s a lovely, versatile vegetable, she says, with a delicious meaty consistency. She might dress it up with herbs and garlic and have it as a side dish with the family meal tonight. “It would go with chicken. My daughter loves chicken.”

Soon, the delicious aroma of thick slices of aubergine frying in sunflower oils is beginning to waft around the kitchen, setting my stomach to rumbling.

It’s a kitchen that is almost unrecognisable from my last visit. That was back in March, when the earlier stages of Masterchef were still being broadcast, but it was already obvious that Sara was a cook with a rare talent.

Her kitchen then was long and narrow, dominated by a huge Aga with two plates on top that were permanently hot; one for frying, the other for simmering.

That prized Aga is still there, but everything else is different. Since then, the Medios have had a large extension built on the back of their elegant terraced town house in St John Street. And Sara has a new, purpose-designed kitchen that is worthy of the woman who was watched by an estimated nine million people in the final of Masterchef 2011.

There is a large central island, covered in a huge slab of gleaming marble, with a sink set in one corner, and a gas hob on the other. There is the Aga – she will use that for all her demi-glace, she says – and next to it a 65 litre oven. Above the Aga hang burnished pots and pans, and on a shelf above them is a huge fish kettle.

Beyond the work area, there is a kitchen table, and above it, a huge skylight letting in the morning sun.

It has all been designed by Sara herself, and everything is handily within reach when she stands at the sink or the Aga.

It is a kitchen fit for a master chef and there is a very good reason why Sara has had it built.

Because, starting this evening, she will be putting the skills she showed off on the TV series to professional use. Tonight marks the launch of her dining club, Sara@StJohn’s.

It isn’t a restaurant – it will be far less formal than that – but it is a chance for paying customers to experience for themselves the amazing Mediterranean food Sara served up day after day on television. Food such as cocoa and partridge ravioli; langoustine, mussel and potato broth; or pan-fried squid.

Once a week or so, she and her husband, David, will be opening up their home to paying guests. A three-course meal will typically cost £39 per person, says David, a marine scientist who will be acting as ‘front of house’. You will be greeted with a free glass of bubbly on arrival, but because Sara@StJohn’s isn’t licensed, Sara won’t be stocking wines. Instead, dinners can bring their own. Sara has a wine chiller to ensure it is kept at exactly the right temperature.

There are three tables, which can be set out in any configuration needed, and Sara will be able to handle up to 12 covers. If she’s to cook to the standard she achieved on Masterchef, that’s the most she can manage in one evening, says the former critical care sister at York Hospital.

Guests can park in Monkgate car park and will be welcomed through the back entrance of the house. Then, they can make themselves at home. As long as they don’t get in Sara’s hair too much, they can watch her at work in the kitchen, or relax on the sofa in her sitting room listening to music.

The food will be served on tables in her dining room, beautifully set with jacquard linen, gleaming cutlery, elegant china from Mulberry Hall, and beautiful, stemless wine glasses.

It won’t be formal. You might have to wait while she prepares dishes, and you may find yourself sitting next to a complete stranger. But that’s part of the fun. “It will be a social gathering as much as anything,” Sara says. “It will be a chance to meet people with similar interests to you.”

And what about the food? It will be strongly Mediterranean influenced, as you’d expect of a woman who grew up in Padua and Venice, the granddaughter of a restaurant owner. She remembers, as a little girl, going foraging for mushrooms, asparagus and dandelions with her father, cooking family meals in the kitchen with her mum – and competing with her siblings over who could get the blackest teeth after eating a dish of polenta and cuttlefish ink.

But there will also be Yorkshire influences – beautiful game, and also seafood. “The strong Venetian background on my father’s side made me very aware of what the sea had to offer – hence my appreciation of the Yorkshire coast and its glorious seafood,” she says.

The menu will be set – this isn’t a restaurant, and there is only one of her, she points out. She can take account of allergies, and will prepare a vegetarian option – Italians always cook lots of vegetables, she says – but apart from that, you’ll eat what she cooks for you.

Menus will be sent out a couple of days before your visit, and will depend on what was fresh and available in the shops and at the market when Sara went looking for ingredients. “There is nothing worse than going shopping for food with a fixed idea of what you want to cook,” she says sternly. “You’ve got to get what’s available, and fresh.”

So, depending what’s in season, expect game, fresh seafood, Yorkshire-grown pork and beef, and lots of Yorkshire vegetables, cooked Italian style.

There will be some surprises, she says – but nothing that will be too alien to an English palate. “I will cook things that people will like,” she says. “I’m not going to do calf’s brain!”

Tonight is her first dining club evening, but she already has bookings through to December from as far away as Liverpool and Scotland – proof of the huge impact she made on the TV series.

She may have cooked in front of nine million viewers on TV, but admits to being a little nervous ahead of her first dining club. With the praise of Masterchef judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace ringing in her ears, however, she’s confident she can pull it off.

“John Torode said he had never seen a final like it,” she says, referring to the climax of the TV competition. She draws a deep breath. “I know I can do it!”

• To find out more about Sara@StJohn’s, or to book a table, visit saradanesinmedio.com or email dmedio@hotmail.co.uk