In November last year, HerCanberra hosted an amazing dinner party with 10 of Canberra’s most fascinating women.

Part of our commitment to telling the stories of Canberra women, we hope to do this every six months or so with a new group of women, and share interviews with our guests in a series of webisodes (expect the first one in the coming weeks).

One of the elements of the night that made it so special was the food…and that was all thanks to the wonderful seasonal produce of the Fyshwick Fresh Food Markets, brought to life by Canberra-based cooking school, Foodish. We spent five minutes with its creator, Alaine Chanter (at right), to find out more…and share the delicious details from our dinner party, so you can make the recipes yourself at home!

What is Foodish?

Foodish emerged from my passion for cooking and my belief that cooking together with other people captures something in relationships that other forms of communal activity don’t necessarily capture. When you cook together you have to, of course, work well as a group or team, but you are also doing something that is inherently giving. You are in the process of preparing something that you hope will bring joy to other people. It’s a sort of core activity of nurture.

I think there is an understanding of this in the way people are building or renovating their homes. The kitchen has become the centre of the experience of communing with others, both in a family and with friends. People feel comfortable in kitchens. Being in a kitchen is a great levelling experience. It’s as though the hierarchies of life are set aside in a space where people engage in more core activities of living and sharing. Cooking together is also a fantastic way for families to cohere. Learning to cook from your parents and grandparents is not only an experience of passing on skills, it is also an experience of passing on family values and culture.

What was the inspiration behind creating it?

I think that my feelings about food, family and culture really began to take form when I lived in France in my 20s. I had married a French guy in Australia and we went to live in France shortly afterwards. His parents lived in Cognac. They were people of the land, and my mother-in-law was a fantastic cook who’s skills were well regarded in the community. I often watched her cooking and noticed the great pleasure she got from the way people loved her food: how we would sit around the table commenting on the subtleties of her dishes, marveling at the taste, discussing the produce. These conversations usually formed the backdrop to the conversational ‘piece de resistance’–a heated conversation about politics. The family and the world seemed alive in these conversations around food.

When I came back from France I worked as a journalist, then engaged in further studies and became an academic, teaching and researching in politics and cultural studies. My doctoral research was on the political situation in New Caledonia, so I continued by involvement in French culture, albeit Pacific style.

About six years ago I decided to finally pursue more actively my passion for cooking, with a view to setting up a business. I left academe and enrolled in the Commercial Cookery course at CIT and, along with the other apprentices, became a chef! Then Foodish was born.

What is the Foodish philosophy?

The idea behind Foodish is to bring people together to cook, as a way of imparting new skills but also forging stronger relationships. That is why our meme is ‘Connecting through cooking’. We run cooking events for private and work groups where people come together to engage in purposeful and creative activity and, in the process, make and eat beautiful food. We run cooking parties in people’s houses and team-building events for business groups. We also run cooking classes. For me, the best part of these classes is the friendships that are forged. People who initially don’t know each other can end the evening like good buddies.

A key to this is that the classes are completely hands on. This is how they differ to many other cooking schools where the experience is more demonstration based. Having to nut out an ice-cream or gnocchi recipe, even with help from the chefs leading the class, is the best way to learn how to replicate the recipe, as well as the best way to get to know others in the group. I know this first hand from my time at CIT. You got to know people pretty well when you cooked with them, and some of my strongest friendships endure from that time.

How did you design the menu for our Canberra’s Most Fascinating Women dinner party?

There were 10 women and almost the same number of special dietary requirements–no nuts, no seafood, vegan, no red meat… Then there was what we wanted to do–a fresh, colourful menu full of vibrant tastes befitting a group of fabulous women. We got to thinking. What could everyone have? We contemplated a ‘no nuts’ vegan option, but there were so many things we wanted to do, that we decided to make a few dishes to suit everyone’s needs and appetites.

We ended up with Watermelon and Persian Feta Cubes, San Choy Bow and Vegetable Twirls to start (including vegan versions); Kingfish (or oyster mushroom for our vegan guest) ceviche with avocado puree, tomato salsa, finger limes and sweet potato crisps for entrée; Cured duck breast with cherries, potato pave, asparagus and cherry jus and exotic truffle mushrooms with aubergine and leek, potato pave, and mushroom jus for our vegan guest, for main; and passionfruit mascarpone on tuile with tropical fruit or coconut jelly on vegan tuile with tropical fruit, for dessert.

It was so delicious – how did you come up with the dishes?

Foodish loves cooking with duck, so the answer to the question of what most people could have was easy. What to pair with duck as the main course? The vans selling cherries on the side of the road had just appeared, and there are few parings more delicious than duck with a sublime cherry jus. We locked that in. Serving it with a vegan potato pavé meant our vegan guest could enjoy the pavé with an exotic mix of truffled mushrooms. Some beautiful fresh asparagus, and we had our mains.

We decided to entrée with a dish that would contrast sharply from the mellow sweetness of the duck and cherries. Our kingfish ceviche exudes citrus flavours and, when served with a tomato salsa and avocado puree, not to mention the finger limes, is a colour and taste fiesta. The sweetness of the tomatoes and the mellowness of the avocado balance the lime in the ceviche perfectly. As an alternative we made the ceviche using oyster mushrooms rather than kingfish, and it worked a treat!

Our dessert was a Foodish favourite–passionfruit mascarpone on tuiles, this time paired with a confetti of diced tropical fruit to herald the change in seasons. In addition we made some coconut jelly and vegan tuiles which we were really pleased with. Instead of using egg and butter, the tuiles use flax seed and oil. They were gobbled up by the non-vegans as well when they tucked into the left over mascarpone after the meal.