Chef Scott is a Certified Personal Chef, a Certified Culinary Inspirations Instructor and a Teaching Chef for Chefs USA. He is a graduate of The Culinary Business Academy, USPCA Premier Member, and a graduate of Seasons of My Heart Culinary Class in Oaxaca, Mexico. His clients have given him the highest praise, and class participants follow him from venue to venue.

Chef Scott is a retired corporate CEO, with over 35 years of international travel and living experiences. He was an avocational chef for many years before starting his own Personal Chef Service in 2002.

Itinerary

Day 1, Friday Nov. 7, (D): Arrive in Oaxaca. Evening meeting and group dinner.

Day 2, Saturday Nov. 8, (B,L): We dive in! We will spend the day with cookbook author and host of a 13-part PBS series on Oaxacan cooking, Susana Trilling. Susana has spent years traveling throughout the immensely cuisine-diverse state of Oaxaca learning local recipes and cooking methods. She now runs the Seasons of My Heart cooking school, and we’ll spend the day there putting together a multi-course, very Oaxacan meal, which we will then devour!

Day 3, Sunday Nov. 9, (B,L,D): The next two days will be spent cooking with the Gonzalez family, a traditional Zapotec family in the village of Teotitlan del Valle. Our experience begins, like any good cooking experience, at market. This being Sunday, we’ll head to one of the best markets of them all, the huge, weekly Tlacolula Sunday market. With our cooking host from the Gonzalez family, we will immerse ourselves in the swirling, wonderful and even overwhelming world of the Sunday market to see how shopping has been done for the last few thousand years here. Loaded with ingredients, we will head to the Gonzalez home to prepare lunch (including tortilla making) and eat it. Evening in Mitla.

Ruins at Mitla

Day 4, Monday Nov. 10,  (B,L,D): The Gonzalez family will treat us to breakfast this morning, including Zapotec hot chocolate. But we’ll keep it light so you have an appetite for lunch!  Today we work a bit more in earnest with the ingredients we bought yesterday. We’ll be doing our cooking the old (and current) way here: in clay pots over wood fed stoves and grinding our chilies, tomatoes and onions in stone mortars and pestles and sturdy metates. We’ll put together a large meal with a main course, a soup, salsa and a beverage for a late Oaxacan lunch a la Zapoteca. In the afternoon we’ll burn off some of those calories by exploring the ruins of Zapotec temples and palaces at a nearby archaeological site. Evening in Mitla.

Pottery making in the village of San Marcos

Day 5, Tuesday Nov. 11,  (B, L): Many villages in the Oaxaca valley specialize in one trade or another, though all specialize in cooking and eating well. And so, for the last 4,000 years the village of San Marcos Tlapazola has specialized in clay cookware, aka pottery. Today we’ll leave the cooking to someone else and visit San Marcos to see how these potters ply their trade. They make cooking pots, comales for cooking tortillas, casserole dishes and other kitchen goodies, just as they have since BC 2,000.  In the afternoon we’ll head to a village with a very different trade, the distilling of fire water! Specifically Oaxaca’s tasty brew of growing fame, mescal. We’ll learn how this good hooch is made and dabble a bit ourselves…so as to sleep well tonight. Evening in Mitla.

Day 6, Wednesday Nov. 12, (B, L): Today we stay very local, heading to the upper reaches of Teotitlan del Valle for a cooking class with Casa Sagrada’s talented local cooks who will teach some of the culinary secrets unique to Oaxacan cuisine. You will learn to prepare a delicious mole special to Teotitlan, make a salsa with Oaxaca's smoky chile pasilla, and try your hand at wrapping tamales in banana leaves. Join your bilingual commentator in the native herb garden for firsthand aromas and tastes. Then enjoy the fruits of your labors with lunch on the outdoor terrace, with its panoramic view of the village and the beautiful valley beyond. After lunch will make our way back to Oaxaca for a late afternoon off. Evening in Oaxaca.

Cooking tortillas on a comal

Day 7, Thursday Nov. 13,  (B, L): This morning we travel back to the Hotel Oaxacalli, which will be our base for the rest of the trip. We will spend the morning with experienced chef and owner of the popular restaurant La Olla, Pilar Cabrera, who will give you an opportunity to learn hands-on about the complex cuisine of Oaxaca. Pilar´s cooking classes, held in La Casa de Los Sabores (House of Flavors), are set in her spacious, newly remodeled traditionally appointed Oaxacan kitchen. In this inviting atmosphere, we will be cooking from a diverse choice of Pilar’s traditional family recipes. You will have a free afternoon to explore this lovely, colonial city.

Day 8 Friday  Nov.14, (B, L): This morning we’ll wrap ourselves up in the cheese business with a visit to a small shop in the Etla valley that makes Oaxaca valley’s nationally admired string cheese. Here it is called quesillo, in the rest of the country it is called Oaxaca cheese. It is a young cheese, like a mozeralla, best eaten when very fresh and bouncy. We’ll be in Reyes Etla, world famous, as I’m sure you are aware, for having produced the biggest ball of quesillo ever. This, of course, upset the neighbors in the  village of Nazareno, who even now are trying to roll a bigger ball! We will also learn about the making of another Oaxaca specialty, tejate. This drink made of chocolate, ground corn and a series of semi-mysterious ingredients, is a pre-Hispanic power drink and a true treat to the palette.

A Oaxacan lunch

Day 9, Saturday Nov. 15,  (B, D): In Oaxaca the best food is not found in the high-end restaurants but in the street food stands and neighborhood markets. This morning we take you to brunch at La Merced, our favorite neighborhood market, where we’ll take a seat at the common table and you can chose from empanadas de huitlacoche, tinga, amarillo, coloradito or rajas, enfrijoladas, enmoladas, caldo de rez, caldo de pollo, mole negro, huevos al gusto, memelas con asiento as well as champurrado, chocolate atole, jugo de naranja, papaya or zanahoria, café, hojaldras…and so on, but I don’t want to spoil the menu for you by giving it all away. After brunch the day is yours for exploring, museum going, plaza lounging, gallery gazing or snoozing. Or, if you’ve got the energy, you can explore the massive Abastos market with us, biggest in the state. You are likely to see more tomatoes and oranges than you’ve ever seen in your life. And things you’ve never seen in your life. This evening we gather for our final dinner together.