When Windi Juli Safitri arrived in Australia in 2017 with her mother and sister, she did not speak English.
A former student of FCJ College, Windi picked up the language quickly and graduated in 2020.
After a gap year, she decided to try her hand at cooking and applied to Benalla Golf Club, which offered her an apprenticeship.
Less than 12 months later, she won her first industry award, a bronze medal at the Australian Fine Food Awards 2022 — in a competition that pitted her against chefs with years of experience.
Windi heard about the awards, held this year at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, through her involvement with the Australian Culinary Federation.
“It’s open to anyone to join who is interested in cooking and it’s lots of people like me who want to show their talent to other people and challenge themselves to see how far they can go,” Windi said.
“It’s a very friendly community and helps you to learn.
“It’s great for networking.
“There are a lot of young chefs and a lot of professional chefs who are members too.
“I’m in a group chat with other members and it came up that there was a chance to enter the fine food awards.”
Windi said she has had an interest in cooking for some time and is enjoying her role at the golf club.
“I think I’m improving little by little,” she said.
“Cooking in a commercial kitchen has a lot of challenges for me because English is my second language, so it can be hard.”
Windi said she wanted to learn all she could as an apprentice, with big plans for the future.
“I want to be able to travel,” she said.
“Once I am fully qualified I want to travel the world being a chef.”
And that goal will be assisted by her outstanding achievement in the Fine Food Awards.
“I was thinking it would be fun and a chance to experiment with my cooking and learn some new things from people there,” she said.
“I made a bit of a mistake during the competition as it was my first time.
“I wasn’t thinking that I would win anything.
“I got good feedback from a chef from Sydney and then someone told me to come over for a presentation.
“I said, okay but I thought we weren’t having any presentations until the next week.
“They said no, it will be today.
“Then they told me I won a bronze medal and I was about to cry when they gave it to me because I had made a mistake.
“But they said, don’t worry, it’s your first time, you actually did really good, and you’re so brave to give it a go.
“They gave me the medal, said congratulations and welcome to the big family.”
The dish Windi prepared was an adaptation of one she had learnt in her hometown.
“I made Australian king prawn seasoned with cracked pepper with a coconut spicy sauce.
“Then I served it with mango and avocado.
“It was a bit of a last-minute thing I came up with.
“I had a couple of months to practice making it.
“We only had 60 minutes to make the dish at the competition.
“I asked if I could have an extra minute to quickly finish my garnish.
“They said I could have 30 seconds, luckily that was long enough.”