{"id":10492,"date":"2019-11-25T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T14:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/hi-lo\/?p=30000004624"},"modified":"2019-11-22T15:01:17","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T23:01:17","slug":"no-mess-is-too-big-to-fix-at-chef-tech-cooking-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/food\/no-mess-is-too-big-to-fix-at-chef-tech-cooking-school","title":{"rendered":"No mess is too big to fix at Chef Tech Cooking School"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"In the kitchen with Teri Appleton Villanueva of Chef Tech Cooking School\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rBNGJmtPclM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re staring at a crooked cake that looks to be a cross between Bob the Blob and a giant misshapen marshmallow.<\/p>\n<p>It needs a \u201cfix-a-roo,\u201d as Chef Teri Appleton Villanueva likes to say. In this case, that involves a little plastic wrap, a cake scraper and a dollop of frosting: \u201cYou can\u2019t ever go wrong with that, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As head of the only standalone training ground for aspiring chefs and bakers, Chef Tech Cooking School in Bixby Knolls, she has seen her share of mishaps in the kitchen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow many times have you done this?\u201d she demands to know from one particularly frustrated baker, whose rose petals look more like banana slugs. \u201cNever. Right. That\u2019s why we practice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chef Tech, owned by Appleton Villanueva and her husband, has been teaching adults and kids how to cook, bake and decorate for the last eight years.<\/p>\n<p>I enrolled in her four-week cake baking class this fall, in part to figure out what to do with the billions of metal decorating tips that knock into each other every time I open my baking drawer.<\/p>\n<p>After finishing the class, I will perhaps need a baking closet for newly-purchased molds, tips, boards, pans and a pallet of high-grade cocoa. (\u201cYou can\u2019t skimp on the quality of chocolate,\u201d she says.)<\/p>\n<p>Villanueva spent the bulk of her career in recipe development\u2014one of her creations, a molten lava chocolate cake, was sold under the Trader Joe\u2019s brand name for 17 years\u2014while her husband Jorge worked as a professional chef for 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>They met in a restaurant (of course) several years ago. His job was cutting the fish; she created the pastries. They worked back-to-back, but had a falling out after she \u201ctattled on him\u201d for throwing salmon bones in her pastry trash.<\/p>\n<p>They didn\u2019t speak for three years. \u201cNever a &#8216;Good morning, how are you?&#8217;\u2014nothing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, she had to apologize because she needed to know what kind of fish was on the menu in order to know what to bake. He accepted\u2014and asked her to the movies.<\/p>\n<p>After the couple\u2019s kids were grown, he suggested opening a restaurant.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI said, \u2018You go get yourself a restaurant and get yourself a new wife at the same time,\u2019\u201d she said with a chuckle.<\/p>\n<p>Running the cooking school gives them a \u201ctiny bit of a personal life,\u201d she said, along with passing their passion on to kids and adults.<\/p>\n<p>The business offers a range of classes for both cooking and baking, including 10-week sessions on both American and French pastry. The school also hosts private parties for the holidays and special occasions, and several classes for kids.<\/p>\n<p>One of Chef Tech\u2019s specialties is classes for kids who are home-schooled. Cooking involves a ton of math and chemistry, after all, and the kids get real-world skills, time with their peers and tasty treats in the process.<\/p>\n<p>I do it less for the education (certainly not for the math), but rather the stress relief. On a list of things that relax me: leveling off a cup of sugar, watching butter whip in a mixer, sitting cross-legged in front of an oven watching the tops of cakes blossom and crack\u2014and now, squeezing a pastry bag and creating perfect rose petals.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually.<\/p>\n<p><em>Chef Tech is located at 3842 Atlantic Ave. For information on classes, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cheftechcookingschool.com\/\">click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As head of the only standalone training ground for aspiring chefs and bakers, Chef Tech Cooking School in Bixby Knolls, she has seen her share of mishaps in the kitchen.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":70679,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[854],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[3296],"class_list":["post-10492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","tag-business","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10492"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=10492"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}