20-Oct-2011

Tom Kime is a world renowned chef, TV celebrity, author, fisherman and environmental advocate, and from 13-17 October 2011, Tom hosted cooking master classes at Pinetrees.

Tom has an impressive background. He has worked with Rick Stein at the Seafood Restaurant in Padstow, Ruth Rogers at The River Café in London and David Thompson at Darley Street Thai in Sydney. In July 2010, he opened Fish & Co in Sydney to promote the use of sustainable seafood, and in October 2011 the restaurant won a major award for 'Sydney's best fish and chips'. In his spare time, Tom has written five highly acclaimed cookbooks and featured in multiple TV programs including ‘Tom’s Kitchen’ (Prime in New Zealand and Air New Zealand In-flight), ‘Ready Steady Cook’ (Channel Ten in Australia), 'Fresh' (Channel Nine in Australia), 'An Asian Odyssey' with Rick Stein (BBC in the UK) and 'Saturday Kitchen' (BBC in the UK).

Tom's master classes featured recipes from his fifth book 'Fish Tales', which won the World Gourmand Award for Best Sustainable Book in 2010. He demonstrated 25 amazing recipes over 4 days, and our guests got to taste each one. There were traditional dishes from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Morocco, Lebanon, Spain, Italy and France, as well as a few 'fusion' creations - but not many since Tom is a food purist who advocates traditional flavours done to perfection (the kind of guy who hangs around in foreign food markets at 5am to see where the local taxi drivers have breakfast....). On Saturday night, Tom hosted a special dinner with matching wines. As each course was served, he explained how the dish was prepared and how its flavour profile was intended to complement the matching wine. It was a fascinating insight into the 'technical' mind of a top chef.

Tom was articulate and funny, with an anecdote on most subjects. He 'worked the room' constantly and made sure each guest had a chance to ask him questions. We hope to make his master classes an annual event!

Go Back