4 minute read
From teacher’s desk to MasterChef
Dishing up culinary inspiration wherever she goes, vivacious foodie Alice Zaslavsky shares her joyous journey of cooking, confidence and creativity. She speaks to Sarah Halfpenny. How did you develop your passion for all things culinary?
I was born into a foodie family. It was always normal for me to talk about dinner over breakfast, but I never thought it would be my career. It was fate that threw me into the depths of gastronomy. I was a Humanities and English teacher, but I used food in my lessons all the time. I pitched an elective for my Year 8 class about food and culture; my heads of school said the idea was great, but they didn’t think I had the expertise or could get the numbers. So I did a Chef at Home course at the William Angliss Institute every weekend for a year. At the end of that year – in 2011 – there were MasterChef Australia auditions. I figured now I had the expertise, I just needed the numbers, and if my students saw me on TV they’d do my elective.
Did you go back to the school and implement the course?
(laughs) No! It's like the VCE certificate, when you do better than you thought so you change course. I treated MasterChef like university. It was an additional way of learning and meeting interesting people. When I came off the show and I visited my students, they were excited to see me as ‘Alice from MasterChef’ and I realised the show had afforded me a platform that was far greater than just 30 kids at a time. The first thing I did was write ‘teacher but bigger’ on a big whiteboard, and all my planning decisions for my career henceforth have asked that question: am I still teaching in some way? And if the answer is yes, then I'm on the right track.
What motivated you to write your latest cookbook, The Joy of Better Cooking?
I wanted this book to feel like the keys to any car. People buy cookbooks that gather dust on the shelf, and I wanted to write something that could be used with any other cookbook that you've already got. In Praise of Veg was an absolute juggernaut and continues to be, but often I meet people who say: “I bought it but I haven't used it because I'm not good enough to start yet.” So with The Joy of Better Cooking I wanted to write something that was like a permission slip for people to realise they're not going to get better if they don't cook. You have to get in the kitchen and do the hours and you'll get better over time.
What’s life like at Cape Schanck?
We moved there in mid-2019 just before the pandemic, so we were early adopters to the tree change. My husband, Nick, is a big golfer and surfer. My daughter, Hazel, also known as ‘The Nut’, plays golf too. She’s four and a half years old and she picked up a club before she was two. She plays most days with Nick. She's quite the spectacle, smacking balls on the range. Foodwise, the sleeper ‘best lunch’ on the Peninsula is one the general public can't get to because it's a members-only golf club. I think The National is punching well above its weight. For shopping, Torello Farm is a regular haunt for us, and Dromana IGA is a great, easy grocer.
Hazel features on your Instagram, making her first dish. Tell us about that.
She encapsulates what I talk about: whatever it is you're interested in, your kids will be interested in. She loves food and golf. Whenever we go to restaurants we take her, even if a restaurant doesn’t have a kids’ menu. I want to encourage restaurants to recognise that kids don't need a special meal; they can be trusted to make their way to eating restaurant food and appreciating flavour and developing their own palate. It's just a matter of being patient and giving them the opportunity.
