Welcome to Tancurean!

I’ve always had wanderlust. Some might call it restlessness, but I prefer to liken it simply to a love of learning – about new things and to do new things. Travelling is one giant learning curve, but acquiring new knowledge has definitely been a key fixture in my life whether travel is involved or not. Want a chair renovated? I’m your girl. Need some tips on bread baking, meditation, jewellery making, sewing, pottery, piano playing, creative writing or a triathlon? I’ve done courses in all of them. I can tell you all about the Company Directors course, becoming a marriage celebrant and registering as a mediator. Tick, tick and tick. Perhaps don’t ask me about the French language, even though I studied that as an adult (and failed). However, I did pick up a few tips from my ‘Learn Hebrew in a Day’ course.

Given all of this, the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland has long been on my hit list. Travel and learning combined in one glorious, five-week package of immersive study! During August I will be decked out in a full cooking garb, nine to five, five days a week, in the countryside near Cork. A few friends have told me that this sounds like their idea of a waste of a good holiday, but I can’t wait!

Happily all of this has come with the blessing of my family on both sides of the country. In due course they can address me as “Yes Chef” whenever I’m in the kitchen.

I have decided to share my experiences of travel and cooking in this journal. Its name, Tancurean, is drawn from the word Curean. A picurean is one who is devoted to pleasure, and an epicurean particularly values pleasure in food, drink and comfort. Epicurus, or Epikouros, the ancient Greek philosopher, taught his students that pleasure was a sign of good, and pain was a sign of evil. As a bonus, Curean as a name means a good person who is full of love!

Just to assure you, the cooking course is not going to be all about potatoes, potatoes, potatoes. Ballymaloe Cookery School might be situated in Ireland, but the course covers everything from cheese-making to fish filleting to making pastry. We will even be ‘hedgerow foraging’ … the mind boggles.

The core reason I am doing this course is to learn to be a better cook. “But you can already cook!” my friends and family exclaim. Well, I can read recipes and follow them in a basic fashion, but really that’s about it. I don’t have any intuitive understanding of culinary expertise, nor ready catalogue of winning recipes.

Like many Australian kids growing up in the 70s and 80s, I ate fairly simple, standard food and our dinner was always meat and three vegetables (usually potatoes, carrots and peas, with an occasional fourth vegetable thrown in to spice things up). My mum was a good cook (her signature Cheeseball is highly sought-after), but my dad was an unadventurous eater, and with both parents working full-time, dinner had to be easy and able to be consumed by all.

School lunch was the same every day except for Fridays (tuckshop day) – an apple and a Vegemite sandwich, served out of a brown paper bag. Occasionally it would be a cheese sandwich, which by Big Lunch time would have melted its way into an oily mess at the bottom of my bag, in the harsh Queensland sun. I was happy with all of this of course, and grateful that the fridge and pantry were always well stocked during a wonderful childhood. However, I didn’t know the potential of food, and I didn’t expect any more from it than its ability to give me energy to play sport and keep my tummy from rumbling.

By university, I had graduated to making a rudimentary lasagne that I thought was the bee’s knees and incredibly exotic. Then, when I was around 19, a boyfriend suggested we go out to a new Thai restaurant that had opened in Brisbane. I said that I doubted I would like it, as it didn’t sound like anything I was used to, but of course I would give it a go. Well, the flavour explosions that occurred that night were incredible, and heralded the start of a lifelong appreciation of food as a hobby and a passion.

I can’t wait to continue my food education at Ballymaloe. I’ll be posting updates to Tancurean on my social media pages, and I’d love you to follow along and send tips, questions and feedback.

(Soon-to-be Chef) Tania