COURTESY OF ZESTY BASIL, BAMBINO CHEF & COOK EASE
Zesty Basil
Bambino Chef
In the kitchen of her Jersey City condo,
Shruti Jain doles out not only hands-on lessons
on cooking, but life lessons as well, focusing
on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle through
what you cook each day. A native of India,
Jain was accustomed to healthy eating, as her
mother had always been very conscious about
her food. It wasn’t until she moved out on her
own, and eventually to the U.S., that the
importance of healthy eating really hit home.
“Moving out of India made me realize that
having everyday fresh home-cooked food is
not something as common everywhere,”
she says. “Over time, I grew more passionate
about cooking healthy and telling everyone
around me about the benefits.”
Her actuarial career was put on hold and
she joined the National Gourmet Institute in
New York City, graduated and worked in a
few restaurants, but her desire to teach others
how to cook healthy led her to the creation of
Zesty Basil.
“I have always believed that teaching a
person how to cook healthy works better
than just cooking a healthy meal for them,”
Jain says. “Food cooked at home is prepared
with more love and better ingredients.”
Through Zesty Basil, Jain opens her own
home to clients, up to six at a time, and not
only offers a full hand-on course in vegetarian
cooking, but she also incorporates a hearty
discussion on nutrition itself. In the end, clients
become dining guests, indulging in their dishes, such as curried red and white quinoa pilaf
with fennel and kale or pappardelle in fresh
basil pesto or creamy coconut mushroom
sauce.
“Jersey City is quickly developing as a
neighborhood for young people who are
more and more interested in leading healthy
lifestyles,” Jain says. “Setting up cooking
classes here helped me tap into an unexplored
market.”
You’re never too young to learn how to
crack an egg, whisk a roux and bake an
incredible entrée or dessert. Just take it from
Rene Safarova-Gonzalez, who has established
a niche cooking school catering to kids. It was
her own childhood love affair with the kitchen
– cooking side-by-side with her mother, snipping recipes from magazines and organizing
parties for friends and families – that laid the
foundation for the idea.
“I always played with the idea, but initially
wasn’t brave enough,” she says. “Having my
own children, cooking for them and with
them gave me that level of confidence I
needed to pursue this business idea.”
Leaving behind a career in the financial
world, Safarova-Gonzalez and her husband
went about designing the studio at the
Newark Avenue space. They made it modern
and kid-friendly, incorporating plenty of color,
exposed shelves for ingredients and tools, and
lots of seating and light.
The classes are diverse and extremely hands
on with an emphasis on healthy meals (many
recipes are created by Safarova-Gonzalez herself); one day kids will be baking quinoa
banana bites and the next, stuffed cabbage
leaves are being pulled from the oven.
“Our entire team feels so satisfied when we
see young chefs enjoy their healthy culinary
creations,” she says. “We try to sneak in chia
seeds in our cookies, quinoa in our muffins,
spinach in our brownies and red beans in our
cupcakes.”
Bambino Chef provides classes, birthday
parties, summer and winter camps, story-time
sessions, play-date gatherings and holiday
events. Safarova-Gonzalez says that while the
end result of a lesson is that a child gets to
enjoy their delicious creation, they also have
an all-encompassing lesson in everything from
math to science.
Zesty Basil
213 Newark Ave., Jersey City
(201) 333-9090, bambinochef.com
Classes: Fully hands-on instructional classes
for children of all ages, emphasizing dishes
incorporating healthy ingredients
Price: $27 per class; $25 when purchased in
packs of three, five or eight
20 Newport Parkway, #1911, Jersey City
(917) 224-7965, zestybasil.com
Classes: Hands-on course, up to
six participants, in vegetarian cooking
Price: Start at $250 per couple
(10 percent off for five sessions or more)
Bambino Chef
Cook Ease
When Marla Mendelsohn is not leading a
class at her uptown Hoboken kitchen studio,
she’ll be found in another kitchen, in either
Manhattan or New Jersey, or in a church,
synagogue, school, home or corporation
teaching just about anyone, from every walk
of life, how to make cooking easy and fun.
“I pride myself in teaching ‘do-able’ recipes
so that my students are actually empowered
to go home and recreate what they learned in
class,” Mendelsohn says. “My goal is to get
my stud