Monday, August 29, 2011

Immigrant women share family recipes at cooking school start-up

Spring There’s no shortage of cooking schools in California, but there aren’t many like Silicon Valley-based Culture Kitchen, which is focused solely on ethnic food and taught by immigrant women.

The Mountain View culinary start-up, which claims to “use food as a means for cultural exchange,” was founded by Stanford graduate design students Abby Sturges and Jennifer Lopez. The women were inspired by their research trips abroad to Myanmar and Kenya, according to Fast Company.

Courses, taught at venues such as Whole Foods, cost between $40 and $60 and involve recipes passed down through generations.

An upcoming class offers a gastronomic tour of Vietnam, involving rice crepes from the northern part of the country, coconut and turmeric pancakes from the central area and spring rolls from the southern portion. The instructor, Linh, hails from Saigon and is a pastry chef by day and credits an “army of aunts” for her cooking skills.

Other chefs were born in Colombia, Mexico, Thailand, Nicaragua and the Ukraine.

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-- Tiffany Hsu

Photo:  Vietnamese wraps are the sort of foods taught by Culture Kitchen. Credit: Los Angeles Times.

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