Sue Frause

Travel spiced with food, The Everett Herald, Sept. 22, 2001

SOOKE, British Columbia – What better anniversary present for your spouse than cooking classes in a foreign land? That’s the gift I came up with as year number 27 recently rolled around. Fortunately, my husband loves to cook…and travel.

Our destination was Cooper’s Cove Guesthouse, a Vancouver Island B&B on the Galloping Goose Trail in Sooke, British Columbia. Located 35 minutes west of Victoria.

Cooper’s Cove is owned and operated by Angelo Prosperi-Porta and Ina Haegemann. This talented team has pooled their good taste and diverse talents to create an interesting getaway. Located on a craggy bluff overlooking a secluded harbor, the small inn has four guestrooms: Blue Heron, Wild-flower, Fireside and Arbutus.

We opted for Blue Heron, the most deluxe of the quartet, which has its own private entrance and deck with hot tub. All the rooms have water views, fireplaces, full baths and amenities such as robes/slippers and home-made chocolates. Privacy never looked or felt so good.

I signed the two of us up for one of the “Chef’s Table” packages, which includes three nights accommodations, gourmet breakfast every morning, a full afternoon cooking class with chef Prosperi-Porta and a five-course dinner for two.

We arrived on a Thursday afternoon in Sooke, and since our cooking classes weren’t until the following day, we had ample time to explore.

A good place to gather information about the area is the Sooke Region Museum & Visitor Info Center. There’s a dandy little gift shop on the site, and the grounds also include the Blacksmith’s Shop and Moss Cottage, built in 1870 and Sooke’s oldest standing structure.

But we’re here to cook. And Friday afternoon, that’s what we did. Our host was Prosperi-Porta, a member of Culinary Team Canada 1994, and a person passionate about food (make sure you visit his vegetable and herb gardens). The full on-site kitchen accommodates six to eight students, and our class included Franz Gedack from Colorado and his son-in-law Bruce Davis of Mukilteo (their wives opted to go shopping in Victoria for the afternoon).

Although Prosperi-Porta hails from Powell River, British Columbia, his family is from Carpineto, Italy, a town 50 miles south of Rome.

“My mother was a good cook,” Prosperi-Porta said, “and food was a big part of our life.”

Passing out a booklet of original recipes, I was impressed by Prosperi-Porta’s menu that we would enjoy later that evening: foccacia; white bean salad with roasted pepper antipasto; grilled prawns; wild mushroom risotto; fruit sorbetto; Dungeness drab, roasted garlic and orange sauce; and chocolate hazelnut ice cream.

It was a flurry of activity in the kitchen, and our teacher’s cool demeanor, laced with a very dry sense of humor, suited us just fine. He made it look so easy, dispensing tips on such tasks as chopping, flipping, skinning hazelnuts and properly peeling a prawn.]

“The joy is creating it and doing it,: he explained. (I later make the mistake of asking him if he ever used canned chicken broth for stock – there was dead silence in return.)

Fresh ingredients are key to Prosperi-Porta’s cuisine, and he utilizes locally grown products whenever possible: raspberries from his garden for the sorbetto; oregano for the foccacia (“it’s a beautiful thing!” he exclaimed as it came out of the oven); local crab and mushrooms.

“Use what you have,: he said. “You want the ingredients to stand out.”

Before we know it, the class was over. In a few hours, we gathered in the kitchen again to enjoy the fruits of our labor, joined by the wives of Franz and Bruce. They were duly impressed with our four-star meal, as were we all.

The following day we arranged to rent bikes and they were delivered to Cooper’s Cove after yet another yummy breakfast.

Soon we were pedaling our way onto the Galloping Goose Trail. Located in the “front yard” of Cooper’s Cove Guesthouse, the Galloping Goose is part of a provincial 60-mile biking/hiking trail converted from an abandoned railway line (and named for a gawky and noisy gas rail car that carried passengers between Victoria and Sooke in the 1920s).

Popular trips from Cooper’s Cove include Sooke Potholes Provincial Park and Matheson Lake Regional Park. We opted for the latter, about 10 miles round trip, and enjoyed a picnic lunch high above the lake.

So how could we think of eating again the next morning? Easy. Prosperi-Porta prepared a final breakfast for his guests, this time, heart-shaped waffles. The perfect ending to a wonderful anniversary weekend.

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