lucinda macdougall
Learn to cook the food you love to eat
Lucinda Macdougall
“Whatever it takes to get you cooking and eating the food you love to eat”
Lucinda brings a lifetime of professional cookery, traveling the world and a passion for teaching to her hands-on cooking workshops.
Her food reflects her respect for fresh ingredients, simple preparation and the seasons but most importantly that a meal brings pleasure, joy and satisfaction.
It all started when….
It was Bali, 1975. Hot, steaming and the only sound I could hear was the roar of the tuktuks. Their stench overwhelming. I was perched at a warang on a dusty Kuta street and, in front of me, a beautiful woman started to prepare a satay sauce in a wide bowl-shaped mortar, with a pestle that was made for her hand.
In went what looked like shallot, garlic and that weird unfindable tuber that only comes into Australia rarely, and I don’t remember what else. Then those small round peanuts with the red skin. All else disappears. I am mesmerised by the rhythmic pounding, the effort, the millions of times this recipe must have been made and refined, the “perfectness” of it.
Ketchup Bentang Manis, what else was in it? I don’t know but I do remember the wild sensation of eating that one plate of food. Cubes of sticky rice cooked in banana leaf, cubes of cucumber and tomato, blacken skinny satay and that air heated “bring it all together” satay sauce, lime and fried shallot.
This is where my love affair with food and cooking started. I understood in that moment some small part of the mystery of food; it came from the sensory overload of place, surrounded with the smells, the sounds, the people and the culture that created this amazing confluence of taste, texture, pleasure and joy, This dish made to nourish and satisfy and delight, was conceived in the depths of time, in the harsh reality of survival, the earth, the weather and what gifts nature supplies.
I didn’t know it then, but this is what I have always been searching for. It wasn’t to be a cook or a Professional chef, but to learn about food, cooking, places, people, culture, traditions and art. It did come to pass that cooking became my artistic expression and teaching my vocation.
This alchemy of fresh ingredients, multiple textures and these intricate levels of flavour are what I would like to offer to those of you with a love of food and a desire to know more.\
"
As a self-taught cook, finally turned pro, I understand that cooking takes time, practice and most of all an attitude to stay open to the process of learning skills and techniques.I would like to be your guide to find the food you love to eat and how to cook it.
- Lucinda Macdougall
