Twenty chefs from Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Niue, Solomon Islands, Cook Islands, Kiribati and Vanuatu are receiving a once in a lifetime training opportunity with celebrity chefs Collin Chung and Robert Oliver (New Zealand) and Fiji’s Shailesh Naidu in a week-l
The one week training is focused on encouraging the use of local foods in cuisine, promoting creativity in food preparation and working with local communities to facilitate the supply of fresh and high-quality produce.
The chefs from small and medium sized- enterprises (SME), hotels, resorts and culinary trainers are attending the Pacific Culinary Training workshop in Nadi, Fiji. The workshop is a joint collaboration between two European Union supported regional programmes - the Pacific Regional Tourism Capacity Building Programme (PRTCBP), implemented by the South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO), and the Pacific Agriculture Policy Programme of Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC). Additional partners include, the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management-USP, College of Business, Hospitality and Tourism Studies - Fiji National University (FNU).
The workshop is SPTO’s contribution to the Pacific Community Agritourism Week currently underway at the Sofitel Resort Fiji in Nadi and is aimed at increasing capacity, knowledge, cooking standards and up-skilling the trainers and chefs.
The training included an excursion to various farms in Nadi, the Lautoka market and Fiji Meats to introduce the chefs to the varieties of locally available foods as well as their preparation.
Practical cooking sessions have also been organized at the Fiji National University, Namaka Campus, to teach the chefs innovative ways of preparing local foods. The cooking sessions will culminate in a finale banquet, to be prepared by the workshop participants and scheduled on Friday 3rd July.
Workshop participant Chef Elizabeth Sibisopere of Lokol Spot Events and Catering from the Solomon Islands said she is very happy to have been given an opportunity to attend the training.
“It is a good learning experience to understand how to modernize local foods and to use it in cuisine. You think you know how to peel a cucumber but then you learn that there is so much more that you can do with it. I did not know that you can tenderize meat using pawpaw skin and pawpaw is always readily available”, she said.
“During the farm visits we were introduced to the wide variety of local produce that is available in Fiji and in the Buyer- Seller mart the farmers told me how to grow some of these vegetables that we don’t have in the Solomon’s and how to choose the right vegetables. I have really learned a lot”, she continued.
After discussing with a farmer at the Buyer-Seller mart that was organized to introduce the chefs to local and regional farmers, Sibisopere made a special trip to the Nadi market to buy cauliflower seeds to take back home to plant.
“A farmer, Kumar, showed me a picture on his phone of cauliflower that he grows and he taught me how to choose the best kind of cauliflower as well as how best to grow it. So I have decided to go and buy some seeds to go back home and plant it myself and use it for my catering”, she added.
The week-long training ends with a finale banquet prepared by the participants at the Tanoa International Hotel in Nadi on Friday 3rd July.