Mulots in Adelaide: patissier extraordinaire

Retirement has ushered in my return to the kitchen (the men in my life, son or husband, cooked the evening meal while I worked full-time). I have prepared for this by embarking on learning all about French cooking to inject excitement into my kitchen life. In the last year when I still worked, I attended four French pastry cooking lessons run by Andre Guerinet, Adelaide’s renowned patissier, who conducts classes in the kitchen of his famous patisserie, Mulots, on King William Road, Hyde Park, in Adelaide. This has been a joyful pursuit and Andre was an excellent teacher, concluding his three hour lesson by serving us with all the delicious sweet and savoury foods we had watched him make. He would demonstrate each step and we would roll, touch or cut the different doughs, or stir the syrup or custard to learn. There was something sensual in his cooking which engaged the senses in the sights, sounds and the smells which hung like sweet scent in his kitchen space. I was enamoured from the moment I read our recipe notes (invariably half in French with glossary to translate), and naturally, all recipes were titled in French.