Articles
A Taste of the Chef's Life
Chef-educator Alison Taafe is the powerhouse behind 12 Culinary Scholarship, a new Queensland Government funded designed to help school leavers to find their feet in the kitchen.
The Courier Mail, February
2011 Read Full Article
Tasty Bits
Cooking dynamo Alison Taafe has launched her own Masterchef cooking class series designed to teach the tricks make cooks into chefs...
Eat Drink and Be Kerry, November
2010 Read Full Article
Eat like a camping king
COOKING while camping doesn't have to mean living on baked beans and burnt snags.
Author of cookbook Fun, Fast and Fabulous Food Alison Taafe said cooking while camping could be just as easy as cooking at home, if you have the right equipment.
"With a small gas stove you can do almost anything," she said. "My philosophy is to make as little washing up as possible. I tend to use just one pan for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Northern Territory News, May
20th, 2010 Read Full Article
Back to school for TV chances
TELEVISION show MasterChef became a phenomenon last year, so now a Brisbane chef is opening a training school to help wannabe contestants prepare for auditions.
Alison Taafe said she came up with the idea for the course after watching the hit series and regularly being asked where people could learn to cook like the stars of the show. "Watching the show I thought, 'Some of these people don't want to be a professional chef but I bet they wanted to do a course to get ready for it'," Ms Taafe said, "At the moment a lot of people want to audition for the show, but don't think they could do it. This course will help get them ready."
The Sunday Mail, January
2010 Read Full Article
Foul-mouthed television chef given a serve
Foul-mouthed superchef Gordon Ramsay has a lot to answer for, says 42-year-old Alison Taafe. Ramsay's televised outbursts may be discouraging young people from wonderful careers as chefs. Taafe said most leading professional chefs regarded Ramsay as an arrogant egomaniac, a bully who rants and raves without much justification. ''I've worked for people like that,'' said British-born Taafe, Queensland's leading cookery teacher. ''I warn the students at some stage they might be subjected to abuse like that. But it's not all hell in the kitchen.'' Taafe carries the grand title of Leading Vocational Teacher of Professional Cookery at Brisbane's Southbank Institute. Her graduates are prized in the industry and are being snapped up as fast as she can turn them out.
The Courier Mail, October
6th, 2007 Read Full Article
Training program for chefs by chefs
They’re calling it the training program for chefs by chefs, but its not going to teach anyone how to cook. Southbank Institute of Technologies new Vocational Graduate Certificate and Diploma in Culinary Arts and kitchen Management is to help qualified, professional chefs get to the next level. “This course is not about cooking but about the other skills a chef needs to manage the business of a professional kitchen,” says culinary teacher Alison Taafe, who helped develop the course following a Churchill Fellowship study tour of the US. Taafe says chefs will be given further training in matters such as staff management, finance, marketing and creative thinking.
“The program is designed to address all of those issues as well as encouraging chefs to take the next step in creativity with modules which focus on food design and styling, photography and creative food writing.” Chefs such as Restaurant Two’s David Pugh, Bretts Wharf’s Alastair McLeod and Brad Jolly (ex Lat-27) have also contributed to drawing up the program, which is a first for Australia. Interested chefs will be able to enrol in one module at a time and subjects are bring offered on Monday and Tuesday nights, traditionally a slower time for restaurants. Enrolments are open. Ph.137 248 for details. 2007
Apprentices get to pick from jobs smorgasbord
Staff shortages and better training has apprentice chefs fast discovering that the world is their oyster. Cookery teacher Alison Taafe from Southbank Institute of Technology's College of Tourism and Hospitality said her graduating students were in high demand. ''I have at least 10 jobs come across my desk every day,'' she said. Mrs Taafe has placed apprentices in top Brisbane restaurants including Alchemy, Seasalt at Armstrongs, the Hilton Hotel and Queensland restaurant of the year Restaurant Two.
''The good ones are now in a position where they can actually choose where they want to go,'' she said. Chef Jason McCormick of Fuscia at Enoggera, in Brisbane's northwest, said things had changed since he did his apprenticeship more than a decade ago. ''I pay above the award . . . and every year an apprentice chef gives to my business they get 0.25 per cent of the business in equity,'' he said.
The Sunday Mail (Brisbane), December 2. 2007
A bit of DIY behind the scenes
Alison Taafe – COTAH
Use a wallpaper scraper to smooth over mousses.
If you want to try your hand at making a foam at home, the cappuccino frother on the coffee machine is perfect. Strain sauces through a ladies stocking (a clean one!) to get a very fine result.
The Courier Mail, November 14th, 2006
It may sound like a tradies workshop, but it's actually a fairly typical restaurant kitchen
TO ONE side, an apprentice is using a blowtorch. Out the back another has a hacksaw cutting up lengths of PVC plumbers tubing.
It may sound like a tradies workshop, but it's actually a fairly typical restaurant kitchen where ad hoc inventiveness is the order of the day. Keen home cooks might not blink at spending up big on kitchen accoutrements which often end up gathering dust in cupboards, but with chefs required to work on tight budgets, they have to improvise more often than not.
Lucky for us they choose to spend money on quality produce, scrimping on fancy equipment and making do with whatever is at hand, rather than compromising on ingredients.
The Courier Mail, November
14th, 2006 Read Full Article
The Good Life
‘Alison Taafe has dined with American Presidents, European royalty movie stars and captains of Industry as part of her cheffing career across the continents. Her concerns these days, however are for those at the starting end. A professional cookery teacher at Southbank’s TAFE’s College of Tourism and Hospitality and one of the few female members of Les Toques Blanches, an international organisation for leading chefs, she wants to attract a new breed of aspiring chefs by changing the educational process and improving the image of the industry’
“My main goal is to introduce a degree program for chefs in Australia. I want to entice some high achievers.” If we train people differently, as far as management techniques go, we might train people with a different mind set. “Why must you get a degree to be a hotel manager, but to be a chef you just have to spend four years in the kitchen?”
Named a recipient in this year’s (2004) round of prestigious Churchill Fellowships, she’s off to the United States On October 6 for eight weeks to research the degree of Culinary Arts course offered by New York University and the Los Angles Trade Technical College.’
by Nick Bray, Courier Mail August
3, 2004
Professional cookery teacher wins Churchill Fellowship
Alison, a professional chef for more than 20 years and a teacher at Southbank Institute’s College of Tourism and Hospitality (COTAH) for the last 10, was one of 14 Queenslanders to win the prestigious scholarships announced in late June.
As the recipient of the James Love Churchill Fellowship, she will be travelling to the United States to investigate the Degree of Culinary Arts course offered by the New York University and the Los Angeles Trade Technical College.