One of the perks in my job as a conference coordinator is that our building hosts meeting planner events throughout the year which can be pretty out of this world. And that was the case this past Thursday. The Long Beach CVB & Tampa CVB put together an event at CulinAerie, which is a recreational cooking school in DC, where Carla Hall (season 5 Top Chef Finalist) would be teaching us a cooking class. Hootie hoo...I am in!
Can you say awesome? Fantastic? A wannabe foodies' dream? Carla is everything that she seemed on television. Genuinely happy and down to earth, and extremely dedicated to bringing the "love" into the kitchen. We were able to watch her cook and go through everything that we would be making, where I definitely picked up some tricks, and then she turned us loose to make our dinner happen.
While we cooked she walked around the classroom, gave advice, told us about her Top Chef experience, and let us harass her for pictures (I was one of them!). Where some people who are thrown into the limelight become jaded and almost angry that people want to talk to them, she accepted our attention with grace and class.
What a wonderful night and what delicious food! I came home with a copy of all her recipes (which she did autograph with "Hootie hoo") that we made and I plan on remaking a few things, especially her root vegetable ragout. Her cooking style, at least for the class, was straightforward and relatively simple. Not too many ingredients, no longs hours in the kitchen, and approachable. My kind of cooking.
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