Globetrotting chef lands hot job

ALL CHANGE: Kiri Macdonald (right) the New Wairarapa UCOL chef lecturer, takes up the baton from outgoing chef lecturer Damian Peeti. PHOTO/LYNDA FERINGA

New Wairarapa UCOL chef lecturer Kiri Macdonald learned to cook in a Pirinoa country kitchen, turning her lessons in to work around the globe and successful restaurants of her own.

Ms Macdonald this term took over at the Masterton campus kitchens of Wairarapa UCOL from chef lecturer Damian Peeti, who has shifted to a similar post at Whanganui UCOL.

Ms Macdonald was "bred and buttered" in Wairarapa. She learned early about the importance of meal preparation in the family home and said it was home cooking that initially fired her enthusiasm for a career in kitchens.

"We lived quite rurally on a farm, so you had to learn to cook. And my grandmother, she was from Australia and was a particularly good cook.

"She showed her love through cooking and that had quite a big influence on my life.

"Every time we went to visit she would welcome us with amazing food, and I think she probably inspired my interest in cooking."

Ms Macdonald attended Wellington Polytechnic, where she completed the then industry benchmark City and Guilds courses 1, 2 and 3, before landing work in the kitchens at the prestigious Martin Bosley's restaurant in the capital, she said. "Then I went to Japan for a year, cooking in different kitchens, before setting out for the UK and Europe. For 12 years I cooked around the world."

The mother-of-three about a decade ago returned to Wairarapa and set up Java House cafe and restaurant in Lansdowne, and two years later the Portabella Pizza and Pasta restaurant in Kuripuni.

She today relished the chance to pass on her experience and help develop the professional cookery skills of students aspiring to careers in the kitchen.

"I felt like I'd done my time in having my own restaurants and had been looking for a new challenge for a while.

"And I've always enjoyed teaching while I was in business, training people to come up through the ranks.

"This was an ideal opportunity," she said.

"Masterton and the Wairarapa have some amazing eating places and in the past staff have been taken predominantly from outside the region. It would be nice to have them going out from here and to staff those places from right here at home."

Ms Macdonald said there were numerous opportunities for hospitality and cookery education at the Masterton campus and the resources were a vital asset for the wider community.

She also hoped to keep nailing the regional and national competition success achieved from the Masterton campus kitchens under Mr Peeti over the past two years.

"We have a good name and people have been doing really well out of here and it would be great to make sure that continues and that people get to know that this resource is here. It really is a secret gem that needs to be widely known and appreciated."

UCOL spokeswoman Leigh Dome said the UCOL Wairarapa cookery programme comprises fulltime certificate courses that are each 20 weeks long and include the Certificate in Baking and Pastry (Level 3) and the Certificate in Professional Cookery (Level 3) - in which highly-experienced chefs teach the skills needed to prepare and cook dishes while working in a supervised role in a commercial kitchen.

STAR courses for college students were also run at the Masterton campus and a short course, Food Safety Methods, was just completed, while an Introduction to Barista course started and runs for the next five Tuesdays.

Ms Dome said both short courses were well-subscribed and subject to demand UCOL was keen to offer them again.

For more information call UCOL Wairarapa on 06 946 2300 or visit www.ucol.ac.nz.