Elise Pascoe's Cooking School

Capital magazine - May/June 2004

Cooking teacher Elise Pascoe and her lawyer husband, John Kelly, dreamt about a sea change from their fast-paced Sydney lifestyle for more than a decade. They considered a number of properties in Noosa but their adult sons living in Victoria were horrified about them moving so far away. Queensland’s loss is our gain as eventually they settled on a fabulous 25-acre property high on Saddleback Mountain, three hours drive from Canberra. They built their dream home and set up the Elise Pascoe International Cooking School with breathtaking views over the lush green Jamberoo Valley to Kiama and the coast.

Elise, a food writer and Cordon Bleu-trained chef, says it took them nine months to find the property, which is mostly rainforest with a two-acre plateau on which they built their home. An architect friend agreed it was a great find, with a pleasant aspect and sheltered from the wind. They started building in late 2001 and moved in seven months later. The cooking school opened in early 2003 and was an immediate success, thanks in no small part to the care that went into its design. Elise says her guests invariably alight from their cars, look out over the rose bed and go “wow”. Once inside the house, the first thing they do is go on to the deck and gaze at the view, which extends so far that “sometimes at twilight we see the jetstreams at Mascot.”

The U-shaped house has bedrooms in one wing and the lounge, dining room and kitchen in the other, connected by a passage with a reception area and reading nook housing Elise’s enormous collection of cookbooks. The open-plan living area is surrounded by wide decks that are perfect for alfresco dining, and is separated from the bedrooms by a courtyard planted with Italian spiced thyme and orange peel thyme. “Smell it,” she beckons. “It’s divine.” The courtyard has Meyer lemon trees in pots and a barbecue that is used in some of Elise’s classes. On a nice day, she might wheel a table into the courtyard so that her students can make pasta without worrying about flour going everywhere. Other students might be found working on a table on the deck.

Restaurateur Anders Ousback helped Elise design the kitchen, which has a demonstration island where she briefs her students before the class. While she will tailor-make classes to suit people’s requirements, 85 per cent prefer hands-on classes. The kitchen is the envy of any serious foodie, with space for 20 people, seven ovens, 13 gas cook tops, a chargrill, amazing cupboard space and a composting system for food scraps. The kitchen has a splendid Aga stove with four ovens, but Elise is even more delighted with her Gaggenau oven, which she says is the best she has ever owned. It has a terracotta baking brick for making wonderful pizzas.

Guests are served morning tea on arrival, including a flourless chocolate cake which Elise first cooked for London chef Anton Mossiman. He declared it the best he had ever tasted. When John is not working at his Sydney practice, he takes charge of the espresso machine, Elise describing him as the “best barista in the business”. The daytime classes go for six hours and vary in duration from one to three days, finishing with a sit-down meal of the food that has been prepared. One-day classes cost $135 (demonstration) or $165 (hands-on) and while Elise doesn’t provide accommodation, she has linked up with bed and breakfast properties so that her students can be accommodated locally.

She teaches French, Italian, Middle Eastern, Turkish, Moroccan, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese, and has a policy of only cooking the cuisine of countries she has visited. The one exception is Morocco, which she feels a close affinity with, having studied it widely. The Moroccan class observed by the Capital magazine team finished with a splendid fattoush (bread salad), chermoula-spiced kingfish kebabs, tagine of lamb and apricots with red capsicum relish, and a delicious dessert of sweet couscous with dates, nuts and rosewater custard. The tagine was beautifully matched with a 2002 Chambourcin from local winemaker Roselea Vineyards.

Elise’s great passion is Italian cooking and after her last trip to Italy five years ago, she came back with 41 new recipes. “I’ve been in love with Italy since I first went there in 1960,” she said. “I’ve had 20 trips to Italy so I feel confident that what I cook is authentic.” Adelaide-born Elise developed her love of food and wine as a child, growing up with a father who collected wine and an English mother who “cooked well and intelligently”. Later she moved to Melbourne, where she began her food writing and teaching career, before moving to Sydney in 1982, where she ran her own cooking school and spent 10 years writing a weekly food column for The Sydney Morning Herald.

She has written five books including Elise Pascoe’s Four Seasons of Food and Wine (Macmillan, 1989, now out of print) and The Incredible Australian Icecream Book which sold 30,000 copies. Elise buys 90 per cent of her produce locally and particularly likes Oscar’s Deli in Warrawong. She shops at the farmer’s market on the waterfront in Kiama on the fourth Saturday of the month and can’t think of “anywhere in the world which has a prettier market setting than here.” She has gone to extraordinary lengths to make the cooking school a success, right down to buying the best ingredients and the best crockery, putting fresh flowers on the table and welcoming her guests to an immaculate and beautiful house. “I’m a perfectionist. I want things to be like that.”

Information on Elise’s classes can be found at www.cookingschool.com.au or by phoning her on (02) 4236 1666.

© Christine Salins

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