Tracey Lister

Conversation with a chef: Hi Tracey. What have you been up to today?

Tracey Lister: Wednesday night is a bit of a regular class. Tonight is just a small group.

When you say small, what size is it?

There's only going to be 6 tonight.

That's a nice number.

Normally, it's about 10 or 12.

You must have only just got back from Vietnam, did you?

We just did a trip, which was fantastic. I lived there for about 13 years. I love it. Lots of contacts there. It's quite a unique trip. We do what other people other tours aren't doing, going into the villages to visit my friends there, having a cooking class in the village, going to where they make the tofu, where they make the noodles, getting in and doing a cooking class in a private home. The woman that I run up with, Cynthia Mann, she's been there for probably about 18 years now, and she works with Hmong and Red Zao women. We do fabric workshops with that group, which was fantastic.

I follow you on Instagram and looking at all the photos of you over there, I think the word that comes to mind is Joy. Because it just seems like everyone is really happy. You're obviously happy to be there. The people you're working with are happy as well as well as the clients on the tour.

I think that we do create that. Like, if it's a small group, We're not going to be busing people around or anything like that. People have either got an interest in food or in fabric or both. And even if they've only got an interest in one, they're generally converted by the end. We had a couple of people on the tour that said, oh, when you do the fabric, we're just going to go over and sit in a beer hall and have a beer, but they stayed and did the indigo workshop, and they thought it was great. A lot of the people we visit are my friends, so it's always great to see them when we go back. Everybody enjoys it.

I've been to Vietnam and flew into Ho Chi Minh and then went to Hanoi, and then I did an extra tour on the end up to Sapa. I just thought it was so beautiful. What drew you there initially?

I went the first time in the nineties, and just fell in love with it and thought, I have to come back here. I want to come and live here for a while. Ideally I wanted to do something in development. And I went to the Australian aid agencies and said, I'm a chef. I want to volunteer, what can I do? They pretty much said, Nothing. They didn't even give me a form to fill out. This is all pre-Jamie Oliver. I went away, but I was sure I had some skills. Anyway, my partner got offered a job on an aid project. He's not in hospitality. And he went over first, and then he called me and said there's a man here by the name of Jimmy Pham. You have to meet him. Jimmy's an Australian Vietnamese man, and he was looking after street kids, paying for them to go to school, clothing, food, medicine, all that sort of stuff. He said to them, what do you want to do? And they said, we want to work. We want to take care of our family. And he said, well, what do you think you could do for work? They said, we could run a restaurant because that's what everybody says. That's where I came onto the scene. It was one of those things. I was a chef in Vietnam. We'd already talked that if my partner got a job, I would volunteer.Only one of us needed to work there and I got involved with KOTO. We opened up the first KOTO restaurant 5 months later. I always loved it, that affected me greatly, working directly with the kids. We took 17 kids off the street. There are now about 120 going through the program at any one time. There are graduates in Australia that own restaurants. It's just an amazing project.

Two things were really important for me. 1, that it was nationalised quickly, and 2, quality training. I just didn't want a little feel-good thing. KOTO got Box Hill TAFE accreditation very quickly. That was within the first three years, which is pretty fast moving for an Australian TAFE. The whole project has been nationalised for many, many years. We've had our first General Manager of the entire organisation who is a graduate of the program.

Just remind me what KOTO stands for.

KOTO is an acronym for Know One Teach One. The kids came up with that idea. This is all pre-Jamie Oliver. Nobody had heardof and I certainly hadn't heard of the term, social enterprise. Nobody in development in Hanoi at that time had heard that term. The ambassador hadn't heard that term. It was just something that Jimmy really drove, and I was able to bring in my technical skill and train the kids and get them up and running. It was a real exchange of knowledge.

What were you teaching?

It was my job to train them to get them ready for work in the international hotels. Vietnamese tourism was booming, particularly in the early 2000s. It was going through a huge leap at that time, and the hotels and restaurants were calling out for staff. So it was following the Australian training curriculum, and teaching them how to break down carcasses in a more European way, the Asian way is quite different. A lot of meats are kept on the bone, which I love. It is obviously, much better. We did pastries, baking fresh pasta, all the sauces, something like emulsified sauces was all very new. I took them through the Australian curriculum, except they were doing it in two languages.

I guess when you're a chef in a kitchen and you've risen up through the ranks, you are teaching people in a kitchen, even here in kitchens and restaurants. Does teaching come naturally to you?

I loved my time in a la carte restaurants. I just loved it. I loved getting everything in the cool room in the morning, seeing a full cool room, having six or seven chefs working for you, putting up all the food and happy customers at the end of the day. But later on in my career, and certainly after I had my daughter, I started moving more into teaching, but, even in a kitchen, it's all about sharing knowledge, and I think that is so important. I'm not one of those chefs that like to keep secrets. I really believe in sharing, I learned a lot from my Vietnamese friends, it's been reciprocal. My number two now has her own cooking school in Hanoi and is doing really well.

It's not always a given, just because you know how to do something that you can teach it. Thinking about chefs, it's really practical knowledge, and you have so many tips and tricks and hacks that perhaps the home cook might not understand. I'm always amazed, and I always think oh yes, that's a good way of doing it. I guess when you're doing something practical like that, it's more showing than telling.

A bit of both. It's interesting, because in the classes here, I always give people the recipes, and I give them a pen, and I say, this class is different from watching something on YouTube, because it's going to be how something feels, how something smells, and how something tastes at various stages of the production, and you can't get that from watching something on YouTube. They look at me like, what, we're going to have to take notes in this class? Where's the wine? But they'll sit there, and they'll feel the dough as it proves or as you've kneaded it, and they'll write little notes about that. They take photos, but there's a lot of taking notes.

In terms of the reciprocal thing of you learning Vietnamese cooking, I guess was that a lot to do with ingredients and palate. Or techniques?

Well, there are a lot of different techniques. The first thing I had to learn was seasoning. I remember that. It was probably my first or second day, and we were making beef in betel leaf. I was saying, you need to put in more salt, even though I'd never made this dish before. I remember her looking at me going, no, it's going to be too salty. Anyway, I seasoned it the way you would in Western cooking, because you never season at the table, everything's seasoned in the kitchen. But in Vietnamese cuisine, the seasoning happens at the table with your dipping sauces. So you have to pull back with your seasoning. So that was the very first basic thing that I had to learn.

I was so enamoured with the food, and it's different in the different regions as well as you travel from one end to the other. When I came back, I moved from Elwood to Victoria Street in in Richmond or Abbotsford, and I was really disappointed. A lot of Vietnamese people run the restaurants there, but I guess they have to westernise the dishes?

I think there's an element of that. The ingredients are so different. There's a fantastic dish that I love having in Vietnam, which is tofu, and it's cooked in fresh tomatoes. It's absolutely fantastic, the tofu's still warm when you buy it, the tomatoes have so much flavour. But, to pull that together here with our tomatoes is pretty hard, I think. Our coriander is beautiful and big, much bigger than in Vietnam, and in fact, I had some graduates come out and stay with me, and I took them to Vic Market, and they were so excited, and bought lots of food, and took it home, and they started cooking. They were almost crying. They said, there's no flavour in this coriander, and unfortunately, we've gone down that path in the West, that it all kind of looks beautiful and big, but there's not the flavour. So I think that I think that's a big part of it. But there are also things that get adjusted to suit a western palate, and obviously, if you've had a Pho in the north, which is the home of Pho, you're not really going to get a Pho like that in Australia because it's a true northern Pho, and most of the Phos in Australia are southern inspired, where you have the bean shoots and there'll be the hoisin sauce and the Thai basil. Never in Hanoi. Never a bean shoot anywhere near a Pho in Hanoi, but because most Vietnamese people here originated in the South, you're getting that sort of pho.

I had some really amazing red noodles in Sunshine. There was a family-run kitchen over there, and I think the owner was importing these red noodles from her village and the food there seemed really authentic and there were things that were being macerated in blood as well. So, maybe Sunshine, maybe Footscray.

I think it's certainly getting more – I don't like to use the word authentic, because that's kind of a crazy word, what does it mean but it's moving away from the prawn and pork spring roll. Everywhere used to have prawn and pork spring roll, and I suppose their clientele, their Western clientele, are getting a bit more adventurous with what they're eating. 20, 30 years ago, perhaps not so much. Also, more things are becoming available that you couldn't easily buy 20 years ago.

I spoke to an Italian chef, and he also lamented the flavour of our produce andsaid you had to do a lot to it and there was that equivalent sadness that as your friend felt, of just not having the flavour there. Is that something that can be rectified or are there small producers that produce better produce, or is that just too expensive then?

That's the thing. I recently went on holiday to Albania, which was fantastic, and the ingredients in Albania were great. You went into the greengrocer, and they didn't have a huge range, they just had a limited range, but the apricots tasted like apricots and they don't taste like that here anymore. If you go to a farmer's market, if you live where there's a farmer's market, if you've got the money to spend where there's a farmer's market. Or, if you're a top end restaurant and you can afford to buy those amazing ingredients. But for the average punter who's trying to put a meal on their table that wants to just go to the local greengrocer, let's hope not the supermarkets, it's not going to be that great. There doesn't seem to be any real will to turn that around.

No. It's sad when food can be such a source of pleasure that we're settling for that. Maybe it's just all become functional. I just got back from Europe and I went to the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, and they had a whole thing on food. I guess because Rotterdam is a really large port. I had no idea that the Netherlands actually produce a lot of produce, but it all gets it gets exported to other countries, but then they import from Kenya. The labour in Kenya is much cheaper. For example, theres basil being grown in hot houses in Kenya. Then a part of that whole exhibit was also about the way we're going because we're really leeching the soil and we are going to end up eating lab produced things. And that is just devastating to me.

I know. I grow a lot in my backyard. I also went to Germany, and Germany's got a huge population, but they can still go down to the local greengrocer in a city or in a smaller village and get good quality berries or whatever's in that season, white asparagus or whatever. They've got a huge population, and they're still managing to produce that amount of food for the country.

I think that should definitely be next on the agenda for the Government. I've been following Annie Smithers saga with watering the vegetables that she uses in her restaurant. That's a situation which I think really goes against helping out those small producers. But to turn back to you, where did it all start for you? Did you always know that you wanted to be a chef?

Oh, no not really. That's going way back. Do you know the writer, Nigel Slater? You've probably read his stuff, and you've read his book, Toast. When I read that, that was my upbringing. That was my exposure to food. I didn't have a family that went out for dinner. I think the first time I went out for dinner, I was probably 18, and it was on the Hume Highway. We didn't do that. There were four kids, dad worked as a truck driver and mum stayed at home and kids had to be fed and all that sort of thing. I grew up in the northern suburbs of Melbourne and I'd go to friends' houses, Cypriots and Italians and Maltese, and they just had this amazing food and I didn't know that food could be like that. I thought, I want to eat this, so then I'm going to have to learn how to cook it. I didn't even know really about doing an apprenticeship or anything like that. It was not something that I'd ever thought about. I travelled around a bit and worked in hospitality as you do. I came back to Melbourne and started my apprenticeship then and worked in places that weren't all that great, I must say. But when I started with Annie Smithers when I was about 23, I think, 24, so, a while ago, it was Kayes on King. She was the one that really turned my head around when it came to food and the hospitality industry. And I thought this is great, I love this style of food. This is what I want to do. She was great.

I just read her latest book, and had a conversation with her about it, which was really great. I think some of those times for her were quite challenging as well, finding her place as well.

Well, she was very young, she was younger than me. She's two years younger than me. So maybe I was 25 and she was 23.

It was a hard industry for women at that stage too, and possibly still now.

Well, she was the first one that really took me away from the pastry and the salad section. Everywhere I went and I did work in some decent places. I was up in Sydney for a while, but everywhere I went, I was constantly told Id be doing do the pastry, or the salad? Annie was the one that really gave me an opportunity to get over into the hot section and the sauces.

How long did you live in Vietnam?

I was there for three years, and that's when I was volunteering at KOTO. I came back, had my baby, who's now 19, and then I went back for 10 years. And I opened up a cooking school there because I basically had a daughter and I couldn't afford to not work. I opened up a cooking school for the general public, so a lot of tourists, they used to come to us on their Hanoi tour. We did Vietnamese cooking classes for tourists or for expats. Occasionally, people from the South would come up and want to learn about Northern cuisine. We did kids classes for Vietnamese and foreign kids, and then we do pastry classes for Vietnamese communities. We do pasta making and so on and I had that for about 10 years in Hanoi.

What made you think about coming back to Melbourne?

Just life. My daughter finishing high school, parents getting older, all that sort of stuff. I came back, and then COVID hit almost straight away. The cooking school, unfortunately, didn't survive COVID. Over there the tourism industry was hit hard. But like I said, my number 2 from that cooking school now has her own cooking school in Hanoi, which is great. She's fantastic. She wanted to be a chef, but she did a local course, which was pretty much teaching her how to run a home, the old domestic service thing. She came in to us as a cleaner, and she said, if I clean really quick, can I help you in the kitchen? The first day, I watched her work, and I said, no, you're in the kitchen. You're a chef. And she stayed in the kitchen with me for the rest of that time. It was a great place. We had about seven or eight chefs, I really enjoyed it.

It's great for travellers to have that experience. I think it helps you get more in touch with the food, but also with people. And you get to understand a bit more of the place that you're visiting.

We always start the tour with going to the market, because the market's the heart and soul of any place in a lot of lot of countries, but in Vietnam in particular, just to understand, when people say Vietnamese food is fresh, to understand what that actually means; the tofu is still warm, the carcasses, the pig carcasses have all come in first thing in the morning. They'll all be gone by 11.30am with more carcasses coming in for the evening. Nothing is ever sitting there for too long. The average length of time between slaughter and table in Vietnam is three hours.

That's amazing, isn't it? We need to watch and learn.Tell me about Brunswick Kitchen, how long has it been open?

I opened the December before COVID, it's all blurred. I had just opened, I think I did a couple of classes, and then I closed for January. And then I opened again in February, and then I closed in March. I survived COVID by doing take-home meals, like everybody did, which was great. It got me through it, without owing anybody money or anything like that, I connected with the community again, having been away for so long. It was quite good to have that experience with the locals and understand what they're looking for and how things had changed. I only live down the road. I could be home in about three minutes. There had been a lot of changes, obviously. When I was in restaurants, you'd have one vegetarian entree and one vegetarian main, and that was it. There is just so much to offer now for vegans in restaurants, and it's great. I got through COVID doing that, and stopped that after COVID, because the kitchen's not designed for its own production kitchen and I really like just running my classes and bringing in other chefs and talking to them all about the food.

How many classes do you run a week and what kinds of classes do you have?

I do a lot of Vietnamese, obviously. Probably the most popular one is Food from Hanoi. This week, I've got tonight, the vegan class. Tomorrow, I've got a private class. I've got group corporates in doing Food from Hanoi on Friday lunch, and then I've got a Food from Hanoi class on Saturday morning. I've got Dan Wilson from Yakimono doing Japanese on Sunday. Thats probably a pretty normal week, except during school holidays, then we have kids classes during the day.

How do the kids go?

Kids are great.

I spoke to Gabriel Gate, and he thinks it is really important to teach that younger generation and get them interested in food at an early age and helping out in the kitchen.

I've had a few parents bring their kids here because the kids are so fussy with what they'll eat. They'll come and pick them up, and the kids will be sitting there eating lettuce and cucumber and broccoli and they've never had it at home. Theyve had control over it because they've made it. I always say, you don't have to eat it, but you should try it, and if other kids are eating it, then they'll eat. We have about six or seven different kids' classes.

What's the best way for people to find out about the classes?

Probably through the website is best. You can book them directly through the website. We've got Dan Wilson doing classes. I've got Almay Jordaan from Neighbourhood Wine, she does classes. Louisa from Very Good Falafel has just started doing classes. Pia Gava does pasta. And then I do my Vietnamese, I also do Persian classes, which are very popular. I do a number of different South East Asian classes. I do one from Cambodia to Lao. I take a dish from every country. If you look through the website or on Instagram, you can see the classes coming up.

I like the sound of that, and I like what you're getting in other chefs. Brunswick Kitchen's a good name for it in that sense, because it feels like it's a real community-based idea.

It is that, and it is a bit of a community hub, I think. It became like that a bit during COVID as well. Like, a lot of people calling in here for their take-home meals who hadn't spoken to anybody all day and would loiter out front for a bit and talk out there. But it is. It is a good exchange. I'm not about right angles and doing things a certain way. We get people in and they want to tell their food stories, and that's important. Give them space, and it's great. They've got a lot of knowledge about about their own food history.

So, with all that in mind, because you've had a long career in food, with different stages, what would your advice be to a young person getting into the industry?

It's a lot of hard work. Working as a chef is really hard work, and if you love it, it's incredibly rewarding. If you're not in love with it, go and do something else. There are a lot of other different things to do, so don't just think there's only one avenue as well. There's a whole range of things you can do: restaurant work. It's taken me overseas. It's helped me set up a socialenterprise, and then a cooking school in Hanoi. I've put out four cookbooks, you can go into food writing. There's a whole range of things. But it's hard work, and there's no set career path. There's no set structure in a in a sense. But if you love it, it's great. I've been in it for a while, and I think I'm really lucky because I do love what I do. A lot of friends will whinge about what work they do, and I think, great, this is my job.

Brunswick Kitchen, 1/288 Albert Street, Brunswick