The Good Life - Oaks Kitchen & Garden

It's all about the scent. The sweetness of the tropical heat laced with aromatic herbs and jasmine never smelt so good. It’s mid-afternoon and the gentle sea breeze takes the edge off the sultry high-Spring temperatures, stirring the banana trees and heliconia leaves that fringe the outdoor kitchen as I arrive in Oak Beach, a short 15 minute drive south of Port Douglas.

Part farm, part residence, part innovative enterprise, Oaks Kitchen & Garden Cooking School is located smack bang in amongst a thriving tropical produce plantation bordered by an abundance of coconut palms. It’s this spot here where Melbourne escapees Ben Wallace and his partner Rachael Boon have set up a South East Asian cooking school, naturally supplied with home grown tropical fruit, vegetables and aromatic herbs and spices grown on their four-acre property.  

“We love the creative freedom we have with our chef's table dining and cooking classes, we’re able to do whatever want with the menu, and change it based on what’s in the garden - having that freedom is simply unparalleled.” 

Meandering up the driveway, I’m warmly greeted by Ben, Rachael and Sparkles. “She’s a rescue chicken,” Rachael tells me, as Sparkles fusses around my feet, leading us towards the converted outdoor kitchen. Sparkles is all fluff and cluck, quite obviously much happier here than her previous battery farm residence. And it’s easy to understand why – the property exudes a comforting and nurturing energy, the various crops providing an abundance of produce, almost as if they were willing for their leaves, fruit and roots to be picked and harvested as sacrificial offerings to their tenderers.  

Oaks Kitchen & Garden offers South East Asian cooking classes several times a week, with the regional focus changing throughout the year based on produce available from their lovingly tended garden. Today’s class covers Vietnamese, Northern Thailand and Myanmar recipes, all which tend to be simple, flavoursome and solely driven by fresh produce. The Oaks Kitchen is stocked with vital supplies, including plentiful bunches of kefir lime leaves, bush lemons, multiple varieties of chillies, coriander and bunches of seasonal fruit. The shelves hold Oaks Kitchen and Garden olive oil, chilli paste, vinegar, home-made spice mixes and a thousand jars filled with dried tea leaves, all harvested from the garden. Our class is a small group of four - myself and my good-food-loving friend along with a surgeon and interior design couple from Melbourne, here in the tropics for a holiday and who are both familiar with and excited by Ben’s restaurant background. We have varying degrees of culinary expertise but we’re all here to learn.  

He was a sous-chef at Longrain in Melbourne; she managed Melbourne favourite diner Lee Ho Fook. Over cups of locally-sourced Herberton honey and tamarind leaf tea, Ben and Rachael describe their tree change and their aim to showcase regional abundance through cooking classes and catering for private dinners and functions. Anything that isn’t grown on property is sourced from Rusty’s Markets in Cairns or direct from farmers on the Atherton Tablelands.  

“We only use produce that's local and local fish that are line-caught. It's an approach that happens all the time down south, but up here we're still seen as kind of niche,” says Ben. The property produces mangoes, kaffir limes, an abundance of galangal, purple basil and betel leaves. Organic beef is sourced from John Bull Farming at Malanda on the Atherton Tablelands, chicken is sourced from Bellasato Farm just south of Cairns, and Carnivore – also on the Atherton Tablelands – supply interesting cuts of wild boar, venison and kangaroo.  

“We love the creative freedom we have with our chef's table dining and cooking classes, we’re able to do whatever want with the menu, and change it based on what’s in the garden - having that freedom is simply unparalleled.” 

Rachael leads us on a kitchen garden tour to start our cooking experience, the surrounding gardens opening up with a dense patch of eggplants, snake beans, aromatic herbs and shoulder-high lemongrass, and collects handfuls of produce from her flourishing veggie patch, handing us bits and pieces to taste as we go. "This is a real garden-to-table effort," says Rachael, who spent the best part of a year tackling jungle weeds and planting a kitchen garden before opening Oaks Kitchen and Garden in 2017. The property, originally belonging to Rachael’s restauranteur parents, has a kitchen garden history that Rachael fondly recalls, unintentionally picked up during her childhood. 

“The defining characteristic of anyone who comes to us is quite simply the love of food. We love to eat it, cook it, talk about it and bond over it. It’s a communal space where everyone is brought together over the visceral experience of eating.” 

“I remember coming up here for a school holidays and talking to Dad about gardening,” Rachael says. “Well, he spoke, I kind of skulked along behind him, barely feigning interest like most teenagers. He said he always wanted to grow his own lemongrass, so when Ben and I arrived on the property, lemongrass was one of the first things we planted. 

“Everything has been a learning curve, a work in progress. I grew up in Newcastle then moved to Victoria – the seasonality down there is vastly different to the tropics! Apparently, tomatoes don’t grow in September up here,” she laughs. 

Ben’s enthusiasm is equally palpable and ever present - he talks of his love for the tropics and his discovery of South East Asian adventures. He was classically trained and spent good time in France and Europe as a young chef. Then, after travelling through Asia and simply being exposed to the different ingredients and cooking methods, he knew he had stylistically found his base, and happily shares his culinary knowledge of the garden Rachael tends. 

“Tamarind is a sour element we use a lot of rather than using lime juice. Lime juice can lose its flavour quickly, while tamarind sustains throughout the cooking process. Ginger and galangal can be similar, but galangal does tend to be more intense. It’s better in stocks and sauces, while ginger can be eaten directly.” 

The first items on today’s menu are fried shallots for garnishing and the fish stock for the upcoming jungle curry. An enthusiastic and gentle teacher (possibly the antithesis of many celebrated chefs), Ben instructs us how to fillet the freshly caught coral trout cleanly and swiftly, a task our surgeon friend quickly steps back from. “Humans yes, fish no,” he laughs. With fish filleted, onions fried and stock simmering away, we move onto the first dish, a spicy Vietnamese scallop salad. We learn how to open and clean the scallops, some of us making it look very easy, some of us muttering ‘slipper little suckers’ audibly under breath.  

After cooking - and eating - the scallop salad, we move onto whipping up a traditional Myanmar Shan tofu, made on a chickpea flour base. Ben explains how the tofu dish lends itself to a myriad of flavours based on whatever herbs are available from the garden and has no choice but to be tasty. “We can add any flavour to the dish - tamarind for sourness, fish sauce for saltiness, fresh herbs for seasonality and texture,” he says. “How good are chickpeas? Hummus is delicious so of course this will be too, right?” 

The main course, jungle curry, is next off the pass. The group bash lemongrass to release its tangy aroma, mash garlic, chop spring onions and pound the scud chillis, peppercorns, galangal and holy basil to a paste. After this, we simmer the ingredients in a row of mini pans along with freshly picked apple eggplant, snakebeans and the hero of the dish, the coral trout, with its skin on and meaty flesh absorbing the intensely fragrant flavours. 

Lesson finished, aromas wafting and stomachs rumbling, we reconvene around the communal table to enjoy the results of our labour, languishing in the undeniable romance of the setting. "I look at the garden, and think, that's not growing as well as I'd like it to, and the weeds are getting away a bit over there, but other people come here and just fall in love with the place," says Rachael. There's no lack of poetry in her gardening soul, while Ben’s mind is visibly ticking over with recipes and flavour combinations based on what he sees. 

“It’s the community we love the most here,” Rachael says. “The defining characteristic of anyone who comes to us is quite simply the love of food. We love to eat it, cook it, talk about it and bond over it. It’s a communal space where everyone is brought together over the visceral experience of eating.”