Chef helps residents with their home cooking

by Sandra Miller
Beacon Hill Times, Everett Independent, Back Bay Sun

Millie Heatwole wanted to wean her boyfriend away from some poor eating habits, so for a Valentine’s Day present, she surprised Jason Duplissis with a cooking class in their West Cedar Street kitchen.
“I thought it would be something we could do together,” said Heatwole. “He is a junk food addict. We eat out a lot. I thought it would be a good way to learn how to cook together, and to be more mindful of our budget.”
Local Chef Julia Grimaldi first sent them a questionnaire to figure out what they wanted to eat and their comfort level in the kitchen, and when they asked for help with some main course menus, Grimaldi decided to show them how to roast, sear, and sauté, and set up shop in the tiny kitchen.
It’s not that either of them were novices in the kitchen. But they let Grimaldi feel out the areas they were weakest in, and so the chef started off by showing them a few kitchen techniques, roasted some broccoli, showed them easy recipes for chicken in red curry sauce, rice pilaf, a brown butter sauce for the green beans, and how to marinate Korean flank steak with ingredients they already had in their refrigerator.
“Are your hands clean enough?” Julia reminded Heatwole when they were about to toss the broccoli. Duplissis spent a lot of time doing the cleanup since it was a little crowded around the stove, and since he worked in a kitchen years ago, he was familiar with prep work. He cleaned up around Heatwole as she held the knife and wooden spoon.
For the curry, Grimaldi started by showing how to quickly coat a pan with a thin oil layer. She showed them the value of a Trader Joe’s 21 Season Salute spice jar. They went light on the onions, since Duplissis wasn’t a big fan. By the end, everyone was pleased. The hard work was rewarded with a delicious and healthy meal.
“I think it went really well,” said Grimaldi. “They were actually pretty kitchen savvy. They have a pretty good understanding of basic techniques.”
And while the couple learned about marinades and sauces, Grimaldi tucked away a few tidbits about her clients’ skill level, so when they take a future class, Grimaldi will be prepared to challenge them a little more.
“Their space was not great,” Grimaldi said, referring to the tiny kitchen and small stove. “There couldn’t be two people at the stove,” she said. “I couldn’t even put two pots on that stove, it’s the way the stove is designed. Now that I know that, I can now design a class for the next time.” Thankfully, she said, “She wants to do something on the grill, on the roof deck.”
Everett resident Chef Julia Grimaldi runs Chef Around Town, a personal chef service that teaches cooking. But unlike an adult education class, she personalizes each lesson to a client’s skill level and tastes. Because she teaches in a client’s kitchen, she can also assess their equipment.
Her day job is as a consultant with the state’s Department of Agriculture, where she’s helping to develop interest in local culinary tourism. But Grimaldi loves teaching.
A native of Albuquerque, N.M. who grew up in an Italian kitchen, Grimaldi came to Boston and decided to do what she loved - something with food. She earned a master’s in gastronomy from Boston University, discovered she didn’t like working in a traditional kitchen, and found a prep cook job at Bread and Circus at Symphony. When Whole Foods took over, the food was prepared offsite at its central Everett kitchen, so she started teaching nutrition to children, and did a few adult education classes. It was a natural to pass along her 10 years of experience in the kitchen to clients in their own homes.
She’s fully insured and certified by the National Restaurant Association in food safety and sanitation, and since she doesn’t work in her own kitchen, it’s have pan, will travel.
Last week, she had a client who just moved into the Back Bay who had no pots, pans, or cooking skills, so she lugged everything to his house, including a stainless roasting pan, a skillet to pan-sear meat, and a 12-inch rimmed sauté pan for spinach, along with everything else, including salt and pepper. “I don’t assume anything,” she said.
Grimaldi is also a personal chef who cooks nutritious home-cooked meals for clients for their freezers, and had gained clients with a few mentions in Daily Candy.
The Chef Around Town Personal Chef Service is designed to help families spend less time and money on high calorie take-out food and buying frozen meals, by learning how to easily cook up a few yummy dishes with an emphasis on seasonal produce, wholesome sustainable ingredients, and local and global influences. She even creates kid-friendly menus.
But as the economic downturn created more cautious wallets, she had heard an NPR segment where food analysts told listeners to get back to basics. So Grimaldi shifted her focus to teaching cooking, and found that her client base was turning into would-be chefs who needed kitchen skills.
“It’s the feeling for the whole country -- we got a little overzealous for awhile,” she said. “People are asking, ‘Do we need that extra TV, do we need to eat meals out three-four times a week?’”
“Ultimately it takes business away from me, but it’s a way to show people what I know,” said Grimaldi. “People prefer I cook for them, and maybe in six months to a year they may say, ‘Hey, come cook for me.’”
She also has a mother’s group that had a monthly playdate for themselves – they’d leave the kids with the daddies, and have a nice meal together. Next month, the group of 12 decided to use the money they’d spend on a meal and hired Grimaldi for a tapas lesson in a large Beacon Hill kitchen.
They could have done an adult education class, but Grimaldi said the benefit of an in-home class is customization. “I‘ve done adult ed cooking classes, and you don’t know the level of each student. I guarantee you get someone who says ‘I don’t eat this, I don’t eat that.’ Before I do a lesson, I do a client assessment before I step into their kitchen, and what kind of equipment they don’t have. In 20 seconds, I can assess what they need.”
She also offers a “Kitchen Essentials” course, which offers a customized guide to equipment and stocking the pantry and fridge. “You can Google that, but you get a real assessment from someone who has worked in every kind of kitchen imaginable. I can tell you the four things you need, and tell you not to get caught up in the hype of buying all kinds of kitchen gadgets they try to sell you at Bed Bath and Beyond or Williams- Sonoma.”
Grimaldi teaches what cuts of meat to buy, a few essential spices, oils and vinegars that can make the difference in a recipe, and a few useful kitchen techniques. “Most people have a knife, but they’re usually not good quality,” she said. “I tell them to buy a $100 knife -- forget your pedicures for awhile and buy a refurbished knife from Kitchen Arts on Newbury Street. I use my knives every day -- it makes sense to spend money on a good knife.”
On the other end of the spectrum, she loves visiting kitchens filled with pretty, unused kitchen gear that’s been untouched since the couple got married. While many of her clients in the Back Bay and Beacon Hill have tiny kitchens, good equipment trumps tiny kitchen, said Grimaldi.
She’d offer classes in her own home in Everett, but she’s not licensed for it. She loves to shop in her town, buying prosciutto and fresh mozzarella at Regina’s food store, though. “I like to shop there, and it’s a nice Italian family,” she said. “McKinnons butcher shop has a really good variety -- I can find any cut of meat there. If I can’t find it, they’ll cut it for me. It’s that old-school relationship people use to have.”
She also loves Super 88 in Malden for Asian ingredients, such as sesame oil, chili garlic sauce, and sriracca pepper sauce. “Rice wine vinegar makes for a nice marinade, and the stuff there is much less than at Whole Foods,” she said. “Their curry paste is literally four or five ingredients. The less ingredients in a product, the better.”
She loves finding cheap and flavorful new ingredients to pass along to her clients. While she provides recipes, her goal is to teach people how to cook without following one. “I want people to understand ingredients and to use a technique they can always go to, as well as keeping their pantries stocked. You don’t get that in adult ed.”