Curtin University economics professor, Peter Kenyon, will officially add ‘cooking mentor’ to his CV with the opening of The Cooking Professor’s Cooking Classes School in Mount Lawley this week.
The opening of the cooking school is the culmination of a life-long passion for Professor Kenyon, who will continue teaching economics part time.
Professor Kenyon said his love of cooking grew out of necessity, from his days as a university student living away from home.
Later, when he was a graduate student in Virginia in the US, he worked at the prestigious C&O Restaurant in Charlottesville.
But it’s only during the past few years that Professor Kenyon has really started to explore his passion for cooking.
“I enjoy teaching and, in a way, this [the cooking school] marries teaching with the cooking” he told WA Business News.
Four years ago, he took long service leave from teaching to work a three-month stint at the acclaimed Loose Box Restaurant in Mundaring, run by French chef Alain Fabregues.
Prior to this, Professor Kenyon was head chef for the Linari International Classical Music Festival in Tuscany in Italy in 2005 and 2006.
“The concept of the music festival was a concert followed by a dinner, which I cooked with my friend,” he said.
“I was in charge of the kitchen there [Linari] and I learned a lot; it gave me the confidence to start the cooking classes.”
Professor Kenyon also worked as an assistant for John Maiorana’s Italian Cooking Classes in Subiaco.
He has won two recipe competitions, one for Delicious magazine in 2005 and another for Kalamunda’s Le Paris Brest’s Gourmet Night customers’ recipe competition.
The Cooking Professor Cooking Classes will run three times a week at first, with new classes added in coming months.
Professor Kenyon’s academic career includes publishing 50 papers in academic books and journals, and undertaking contract research projects for government and private sector clients.
He was joint editor of the Australian Economic Review from 1993 to 1995.
