From Tuesday, September 26, the Kaz Community Kitchen will run a number of different cooking classes through several of its programs. 

There will be school holiday classes for kids, classes designed for people with disabilities and classes featuring celebrity chefs.

The school holiday classes will be run as part of Kazcare’s ‘Kaz Kids Workshops’ and will include a ‘science kitchen takeover’ run by megatronic engineer, Marie Cassar, as well as ‘eggs and magic’ from Kazcare founder, Peter Kazacos. 

In term four, October, the kitchen will also run free cooking classes for disabled members of the community twice weekly.

Mr Kazacos said these classes will feature different styles of cooking and will provide an opportunity for people to learn new skills, while meeting new people. 

“A number of different charities can bring people out here [to Kazcare] to participate in the classes.”

“It will provide social interaction, they’ll get to eat what they have made and it’ll be a nice, fun environment,” he said. 

The kitchen will also be used to run a third program, ‘The Cook’s Cooking School’, which will be open to the general public. These classes, which will attract a fee, will mostly be run by chef and food stylist Anna Phillips, occasionally featuring celebrity chefs. 

“We’ll have the food editor of Taste magazine and Women’s Weekly magazine coming to deliver classes,” Mr Kazacos said. 

This third program operates as the “commercial arm of the charity”, Mr Kazacos said, raising funds to enable the disability classes to be offered free of charge.

All the profits made from these classes will be directed back into Kazcare’s Your Angel charity. 

As well as these classes, the kitchen will be available for private use. People with a minimum level of food safety certification can rent out the space to run their own classes, or use it in conjunction with the hall. 

Previously, Kazcare’s kitchen was exclusively rented to one person to run.

“We found a lot of people wanting access to the cooking school,” Mr Kazacos said.

“So we have opened it up to the public.”

“We are trying to leverage our different tenants and people who work together to add new dimensions [to Kazcare].”