Vegetarian Cooking Classes Johannesburg

Strictly speaking there are several different types of vegetarian. There are the extreme type, called Vegans, who preclude any type of animal product from their diet, their attire or their homes. Then there are the not-so-strict vegetarians who may or may not include dairy products such as cheese, milk and butter, or eggs. On the fringes are those individuals who may or may not include honey, wool or feathers. These days, vegetarian cooking classes in Johannesburg try to cater for the different types of vegetarian that future chefs may come across. It is not easy to cater for everybody’s taste, but thanks to cooking classes most Johannesburg eating-houses have at least one vegetarian dish on their menu. One catering school just outside Johannesburg includes vegetarian cooking in their classes. That school is the Prue Leith College of Food and Wine.

The Prue Leith College tries to include in its curriculum, where feasible, as many nonstandard dishes as possible in order to prepare the future chefs at the college for any circumstance that may arise in their future careers. The college is just a few kilometres to the North of Johannesburg, and their classes include vegetarian cooking as well as international dishes from several different regions throughout the world. The college has been running for a little over ten years, and was founded with the object of training young chefs to meet the challenges of some of today’s top class restaurants. There was a growing shortage of highly motivated and well-trained culinary staff in the South African catering industry in the mid 1990s due to the rapid growth of the tourism industry following the lifting of economic sanctions. The Prue Leith College was founded to help stem this deficiency.

Students wishing to take the Prue Leith Diploma Course should first apply to the college through the application form that can be found on their webpages. They will need to have reached eighteen years of age and to have passed their Matric Exam. They will only be accepted into the college once they have completed a questionnaire and attended an interview board. The diploma course lasts for eighteen months that are made up of three six-month semesters and starts in January and July of each year. A maximum of forty students make up each course. Most of the first semester in this Johannesburg college is spent in the classroom and it is here that students will take classes in vegetarian cooking. The second semester sees students engaged in the college’s philosophy of putting into practice what they have learned in the classroom as soon as possible, when they work in most kitchen and restaurant positions at Prue Leith’s, the college own on-site restaurant, and at Prue Leith Catering. In their final semester students are placed out in five star restaurants, hotels and game lodges the length and breadth of South Africa and in Europe where they work for the first time under some of the industries top chefs.