A Personal Profile

With parents who were both excellent cooks, Penny’s interest and curiosity began to develop at a very early age. But it was as a mature student that she applied to study a City and Guilds cookery course and what began as two nights a week soon graduated to full days and took three years to complete. The experience was unique in a period when British cooking was generally considered to be in a rut. Excellent tutors with high expectations believed passionately in this very different non-catering cookery course called Food, Family and Nutrition. It was advanced cookery based on the British equivalent of the French Cordon Bleu dealing with all aspects of food and with training of a very high standard.  Comprehensive coverage was given to special diets both international and ethnic, religious dictates, health and hygiene, childcare, interior design, kitchen planning, time and motion studies, wines and service. All this was followed by advanced training in patisserie work as Penny pursued another of her interests.

 Penny undertook Adult Education teacher training with Cheshire County Education Authority and went on to teach Hostess and Microwave Cookery for the same authority for some fourteen years until she moved to North Wales. During her time in Cheshire she also worked as a Home Economist for Dutch, German and Italian companies and ran a successful Bistro specializing in fish.

Penny and her husband moved to a small hotel in North Wales at the end of the ‘eighties. In 1996 after becoming involved with yachts and crewing through their son in France they decided to open a cookery training school to be run in conjunction with the hotel, a good training ground. The interest it sparked persuaded them to find another venue closer to yachting communities.

The South of France was the first thought because of Penny’s connections there. But in June 1999 one of her students introduced her to a crew agent in Palma. He was interested in her work and her ideas and because of the increasing demand through his office for better-trained cooks suggested Penny set up her school in Palma.

 Penny now has her own premises, purpose-equipped to accommodate courses for trainee galley cooks, stewards and stewardesses who come from as far afield as Canada and the U.S.A., South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Her courses, naturally, are international in content. In addition wine courses, food and wine evenings, cookery demonstrations, evening classes and leisure cooking classes all now feature in her School’s programme.

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