Rancho La Puerta...Cooking Vacations...Culinary Getaways...Cooking Classes!

Rancho La Puerta

The name of Rancho La Puerta's new cooking school honors its Mexican heritage as well as the bird songs that drift through its courtyards. La Cocina Que Canta's generous, 4,500-square-foot layout comprises a large hands-on classroom/kitchen, cookbook library, and culinary gift shop -- all set in the heart of the spa’s famous 6-acre organic farm “Tres Estrellas” (Three Stars), where fruits, herbs, and vegetables thrive beneath a mountain still held sacred by native North Americans.

La Cocina Que Canta opened in August, 2007, 18 months after Deborah Szekely and daughter Sarah Livia Brightwood, the school’s landscape and building designer, pushed a ceremonial shovel into the valley’s rich soil -- an act that sowed the seeds for the establishment of the first-ever Spa Cooking School.

Today, in the classroom/kitchen looking out on patios and vistas enlivened by tinkling cantera-stone fountains, and billows of brilliant geraniums and wisteria blossoms, guests enjoy a progressive series of hands-on classes followed by delicious meals. The essential simplicity and joy of using fresh, organic ingredients in inspiring ways sets the table for the school’s curriculum. Guests delight in making the connection between their newfound cooking skills from La Cocina Que Canta, and their heightened understanding of mind/body/spirit fitness from the rest of their visit to the spa.

“Our Cooking School is borne of my guests’ tremendous interest in our healthful cuisine, and their new experience with freshness, seasonality, and our chefs’ flavor-enhancing culinary magic,” says Deborah Szekely, who with her husband, Edmund, founded Rancho La Puerta in 1940. “I’m besieged each day by guests who want to know how to make their food at home reflect all that they’ve learned at the Ranch."

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Culinary-Spa Vacation Highlights:

Rancho La Puerta's culinary learning traditions go back 66 years.  Guests in the  early days spent an obligatory day or two helping in the kitchen.  Vegetables needed preperation.  Sprouted grains were ground for the spa's special crackers that were baked in the sun.  Deborah Szekely was there throughout the many decades, often teaching classes herself in how to "de-calorize" favorite recipes from home.  Today, mother and daughter - two true spa visionaries - have drawn from their knowledge of the great hacienda kitchens of Mexico and Latin America to create La Cocina.  World Heritage Sites in Oaxaca, Michoacan, and the famous village of San Miguel de Allende north of Mexico City, inspired the school's pastiche of sun-washed walls, hand-hewn open-beam ceilings, ancient doors, hand-painted tiles, and well-fitted stonework.

Note: Epitourean, LLC provides a referral service for operators of culinary classes, vacations, cruises, schools and demonstrations. We cannot be held responsible for variations in descriptions, courses offered, changes to dates and/or prices provided by the operators.