Laura's Experience working at Forest Avenue

• Tell us a little bit about yourself.
• I’ve always enjoyed cooking. In doing the course, I’m planning for the next 10 years of my career. I’m looking at how I can combine my design background with food and my love of cooking and bring all of these elements together in a career in food styling.
• What was it like working with Chef John Wyer?
• Working with John Wyer was really good. He’d ask me to come over and taste a lot of the dishes. He’d be like, 'I’ve just cured this meat and have a look at this, we’ve just made our own ricotta.' The kitchen was so busy when he was doing this and I think it’s a great mark of his character that he took the time to show me all of those things.
  
  He was very generous with his information and there were no chef’s secrets or anything like that. I think that probably comes from his teaching background. I think he was able to judge what I was capable of doing, he didn’t throw me totally in the deep end, and kept me close to the action.
• What was a personal highlight during your stage placement at Forest Avenue?
• Some of his flavour combinations were really different. I tried his marshmallows with black tea soaked prunes and that was an amazing combination. Without seeing that, you’d never think to do that yourself. It really starts to get you thinking about and challenging flavour combinations which is really exciting.

Above Picture: Laura on the pass at Forest Avenue learning at the elbow of Chef John Wyer.