Elise Pascoe

After an early breakfast (which didn't live up to the promise of yesterday), we travelled to Elise Pascoe International Cooking School, a beautiful purpose-built farmstead perched high on the rolling green hills of the Illawarra dairy country. We met our fellow students (their were 13 of us in all), and we were given various dishes to cook throughout the day. D. and I were assigned the lamb cutlets and the turkish delight. Sounds like fun, right? Well, that's what we thought. Unfortunately it transpired that we did all the dirty work (such as preparation and cleaning up), while Elise did the fun stuff (i.e. the actual cooking and serving). For example, although D. and I spent a good hour "frenching" the lamb cutlets, it was Elise who got to barbeque them and apply the garnish of finely chopped onion, parsely, lemon zest, lemon juice and olive oil afterwards. To top it all off, she had the temerity to compliment us on our dish! I had half a mind to suggest that she might as well eat it too, since she'd done practically everything else.

The net result is that we learned very little, we didn't have much opportunity to be hands-on, and when we did get the chance, we were either doing menial tasks or getting pulled up by Elise for doing something "wrong". And it wasn't just us. Another poor girl was about to drizzle some olive oil over her stuffed fennel bulbs, only to have Elise say "I'll do that", take the bottle from her and then do it herself! It may sound like I'm being picky, but it really was disappointing. We wanted to have fun cooking delicious food that we could be proud of, but we were let down. Elise can be mildly insulting (she said to one student that he had "ruined" a dish by using coriander instead of parsely), and she prefers to take over rather than have her students make a bit of a mess of things. But that's exactly how you learn, isn't it? And I know that D. and I would have had a much better time, and been a lot prouder of what we'd done, if Elise had just let us sprinkle the garnish on the lamb ourselves. At least then we'd have felt partly responsible for the final dish. But, no, we had to watch her do it, and then smile embarrassedly when the other students complimented us on our dish, knowing full well that we had little to do with it.

After the ultimately disappointing visit to Elise Pascoe International Cooking School, we enjoyed a quick hit of golf at Jambaroo golf course, as the sun was setting. Just a bit of mucking about with a nine iron and a putter in the practice area, but a nice way to unwind after getting a bit annoyed with Elise's holier-than-thou attitude and boastful anecdotes from her younger days. We returned to the B&B for a relaxing spa, during which it started to rain. Still needing dinner, we dashed into Kiama and drove around a bit before settling on Chachis, which turned out to be a wonderful Italian restaurant. We arrived late, so the chef could only offer some of the menu (nothing than required a long time in the oven). D. wanted to have the seafood linguini, and asked whether the seafood was fresh. The waitress actually went into the kitchen and asked the chef, returning to tell us that the fish, prawns and calimari were indeed fresh, but that the scallops were frozen. Good for them! D. happily ordered the linguini, and wasn't disappointed. My gnocchi, pan-fried in lots of butter with bacon, spinach and spanish onion, was absolutely sensational. A light salad on the side helped balance the heavy food, and we departed Chachis happy with life once more.