Cooking School Chefs

 

Kurma Dasa

Kurma Dasa is one of the world's leading proponents of pure and natural vegetarian cuisine.

Known as 'Australia's Vegetarian Guru', Kurma Dasa has been writing cookbooks, teaching students around the world and hosting internationally broadcast TV shows for over thirty five years. His books have sold almost one million copies.

Kurma's light-hearted presentation of healthy, attractive and innovative cuisine continues to shake off the outdated notion that vegetarian food is dull and lack-lustre. Kurma's cuisine is stylish and delicious, and most importantly, highly approachable.

Kurma was head chef at Melbourne's most popular Vegetarian Restaurant, Gopal's for many years, and is the author of 'Great Vegetarian Dishes' (which is in its seventh print run), 'Cooking With Kurma', 'Quick Vegetarian Dishes', and most recently 'Vegetarian World Food'. All books have received wide acclaim for their professional, clearly written and richly illustrated presentation of vegetarian cuisine.

Kurma has hosted three internationally broadcast television cooking series seen in over 46 countries. His third and latest 26-part TV series "Cooking with Kurma - More Great Vegetarian Dishes" recently screened throughout Australia on SBS and Foxtel.

Kelly Lord

For the past 4 years Kelly has been the head chef at the famous Spirit House restaurant and now teaches at their fabulous cooking school. With a passion for travel you can find Kelly leading Spirit House food tours to Thailand, Vietnam and Laos - luckily for us, he travels south as well.

With years of experience leading kitchen teams in 5 star hotels, Kelly has an innate gift for food styling and a wealth of cooking knowledge to share with you. He will be a regular fixture at Sticky Rice Cooking School teaching you the tips, trick and techniques to create the sort of award-winning Asian cuisine that the Spirit House is famous for.

Genevieve Harris

Chef Genevieve Harris started her working life as a school teacher, all the while cooking furiously for friends and family, honing her skills in the kitchen. She then embarked on a 25 plus-year career in hospitality that began at the Grey Masts restaurant in Robe on the Limestone Coast in South Australia.

In the late 1980s Genevieve moved to Sydney where she worked at the Blue Water Grill in Bondi, and at the Bathers Pavilion, Balmoral, two Sydney beachside dining benchmarks at that time. In between working in these, and other iconic Sydney restaurants, she spent time travelling (and eating) around South East Asia before spending two years as executive chef at the luxurious Amankila Resort, Bali.

Food critics have lauded her as a ‘perfectionist’, a chef of ‘incredible finesse and refinement’ with a ‘rare understanding of ingredients and spices.’ Returning to Adelaide in the late 1990’s she owned and ran the highly regarded Nediz Restaurant with her business partner and sister Marianne Harris. Together they have continued the Nediz business moving into food writing, styling, teaching and exquisite special occasion catering events.

Genevieve is an inspiration to learn from and she is passionate about sharing her wealth of knowledge. Speciality classes with Genevieve will have you journeying to regional Indonesian and uncovering the secrets of Nonya cuisine.

Ali Seedsman

Chef Ali Seedsman has been cooking professionally for over 20 years. During this time she spent 9 years in Sydney, running al a carte restaurant service and functions concurrently at The Bayswater Brasserie and then Bathers Pavillion. She also gained extensive experience at MG Garage.

Ali returned to Adelaide and worked as the 1st Executive Chef at Magill Estate and then Head Chef at Universal Wine Bar. Ali now shares her time between teaching and catering for private and corporate events and we a lucky enough to have her teaching some exciting Asian classes at the Sticky Rice Cooking School and inspiring audiences as one of our demonstration chefs at public events.

Trung Van Tran

You may recognise Trung Van Tran as one of the popular TV chefs on the show Beat the Chef broadcast on ABC.

Although of Chinese descent, Trung was born and raised in Vietnam. He first learnt to cook by watching his mother as she prepared dishes both at home and in her work as a cook in a coffee shop in Vietnam. Trung came to Australia in 1977 and started cooking in restaurants, learning his trade on the job. He’s cooked in a number of places and even owned a Vietnamese restaurant at one time.

Trung says he’s noticed a big change in Australia’s Asian cooking scene during his years here. When he first arrived, Thai food was very popular but you couldn’t find Vietnamese kitchen supplies anywhere. By the mid eighties things had changed in favour of Vietnamese cooking and eating. Trung has now given up the restaurant business in favour of teaching Vietnamese cooking.

Trung’s style of teaching is relaxed and entertaining, and is his knowledge of Vietnamese food is immense. Trung’s sense of adventure and love of travel is a perfect fit for the Sticky Rice Cooking School. Just back from his latest adventure in Vietnam, Trung joins us in 2009.

Yukiko Anschutz

Chef Yukiko Anschutz is currently working at the prestigious Hyatt Regency hotel in the award winning “Shiki” restaurant. Chef Yukiko has a passion for Thai and Japanese cuisine and over 14 years of experience in the food industry. During this time she has tutored for the Institute of TAFE and been a guest demonstrator at major culinary events including the 2006 ‘‘Seafood Soiree’’ and the 2005 central market ‘‘Tasting of South Australia’’ and undertaken training at the Thai Cooking School at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok.

Chef Yukiko is a perfect fit for the Sticky Rice Cooking School because she believes that cooking should be fun and exploratory; a fundamental tenet of her classes. Yukiko has an unique ability to demonstrate traditional Asian cuisine and then infuse it with exciting and contemporary influences. Chef Yukiko builds on this by making her cooking classes enjoyable and uncomplicated -she has the exceptional ability to deconstruct complex and intimidating dishes; distilling the recipes and culinary techniques into simple and effective principles that allow all lovers of fine food to improve their culinary skills.

Experience Chef Yukiko’s effervescent and engaging style by taking part in one of her Japanese or Thai cooking adventures.

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