Art of Cuisine
"The joys of the table belong equally to all ages, conditions, countries and times; they mix with all other pleasures, and remain the last to console us for their loss."
"Gourmandise is an impassioned, rational and habitual preference for all objects that flatter the sense of taste." Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin,
2008 Offerings:
SOUTH INDIA- Cooking from the Coromandel to the Malabar Coasts in March
FRANCE: La Vie en Normandie in June
Special Regional Events in Australia that celebrate special chefs in special places:
Sunday 17 February 2008 Sorrento Lunch in a special private organic garden with Andrew McConnell
A Library of Original Recipes, many of which changed people’s cooking lives.
Art of Cuisine Offers:
Special Culinary Vacations where guests spend time in wonderful food regions, exploring the gastronomic culture, the local markets, and time in lovely kitchens under Marieke’s supervision and instruction, cooking fabulous food from local ingredients. Past destinations have included the Perigord Region in SW France and East Bali.Throughout the year, we will also invite you to sepcial Regional events with some of the best Australian chefs .
Stories of Grand Cooking Events coming soon!
Marieke still teaches classes from time to time and annually at the renowned Accoutrement school in Sydney and has a loyal following of students.
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Art of Cuisine is born from Marieke’s passion for food and cooking and her 30 years of experience as a chef, cooking school teacher and tour leader of gastronomic tours abroad. Over these years she garnered a reputation as:
- an innovative, passionate chef inspired by the garden and its seasons, travel, the pleasures of shared repasts;
- a gifted communicator who encouraged many hundreds of students to come to cooking with enthusiasm and a commitment to creating wonderful meals for tables of all occasions;
- a respected Ambassador for creating a New World food culture, in her roles as Convenor of two Symposiums of Australian Gastronomy, and Chair of the Australasian Regional Food Wine Group for 5 years;
- a highly regarded public speaker with her presentations at the Melbourne Food + Wine Festival and at the New Zealand Food Festival;
- an admired colleague by her peers that have included Phillip Searle, Andrew McConnell, Sandor Palmai, Cheong Liew, Tetsuya Wakuda, Chris Manfield, Maggie Beer and Stephanie Alexander.
"A passion for gastronomy has underpinned a lifetime's professional career. This inquisitiveness connects to the tapestry of life: ritual and culture, civility and celebration, pleasure and health, land use and sustainability, politics and globalisation, difference, distinctiveness and diversity. The climate has never been riper for innovation and the emergence of niche and specialty products and markets.
The challenge for us is to reinvent the Old World concept of regionalism that was born of geography, seasonality, tradition, connection to place and land- where the people of a locality totally share their identity and are shaped by its bounty and its limitations”.- a personal view.
"Gastronomers of the year 1825, who find satiety in the lap of abundance, and dream of some newly-made dishes, you will not enjoy the discoveries which science has in store for the year 1900, such as foods drawn from the mineral kingdom, liqueurs produced by the pressure of a hundred atmospheres; you will never see the importations which travelers yet unborn will bring to you from that half of the globe which has still to be discovered or explored. How I pity you!" Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin author of the The Physiology of Taste and the quotes above was possibly one of the finest food critics ever. Even though he wrote at the turn of the late 18th C early 19th C. his ideas and aphorisms not only still ring true today but continue to nourish scholars and food historians to this day. He even foresaw, without knowing its exact nature, the new vogue for 'molecular cuisine'.