Located within the Yarraville
village, Serious Cooks and Books and Cooking Classes is a foodies' outlet well-stocked
with kitchen hardware and accessories.
Alongside the standard products of
saucepans, knife sets and appliances, you will find Bodum saucepans, decorative platters,
bread making equipment and mixtures, essential ingredients, gourmet foods and hampers, all
of the latest cook book releases and advice on action in the kitchen.
Jill Adams, the owner-manager of
the store also runs Saturday morning demonstrations and more formal classes. The style of
cooking taught ranges from bread making to Southern Indian. The classes are hands on, and
participants work together around a custom-made work bench. Whatever is made is eaten
after the class with a glass or two of wine.
![Media5535[1].jpg (18101 bytes)](Media55351.jpg)
After coming home from a
busy day at work, more and more Melburnians are getting ready to go out again - to take a
cooking class. The number of cooking schools in Melbourne has grown significantly over the
last five years, indicating that we are increasingly interested in the collective
experience of enjoying food. We are finding that the skills of the kitchen are timeless,
especially now that we have a wider range of culinary styles and more types of food
available. The number of schools and classes also indicate the entrepreneurial skills of
those who take them. Whether professionally trained chefs or self-starters building a
successful second wave career, the instructors of these classes are responding to the call
of those hungry for stimulation or social activity, and the need to know how to put
together a damn fine feed.
It's not often that you
walk into a cooking class and come across a majority of male participants, let alone a
course that is entirely attended by men. But this is clearly the case in the Blokes Only
cooking course run by Jill Adams at her Yarraville studio.
Part of Jill's motivation in offering the course was her past experience teaching mixed
groups where she felt that the male members held back in their participation which meant
that their enjoyment suffered. Perhaps they felt anxiety about the unfamiliar surroundings
of the kitchen and the equipment, or the scrutiny when it came to the hands-on aspect of
the class - or perhaps the chatter was more about husbands, children and low-fat foods
than work, politics and hardware. So no-nonsense Jill responded with a course which
allowed men to come together and learn how to make some very edible dishes. They might
also find that following recipes and cooking are very much similar to activities
considered more traditionally mechanical. And, along the way, Jill says, her members may
well have the chance to widen their conversational menu.