Thirty-six years ago, Kelly Little kicked her parents out of the kitchen and prepared a turkey dinner with all the trimmings.
“And I didn’t burn anything,” laughs the woman who made that meal on an old wood cookstove and has never stopped cooking. “I was the type of cook who dirtied the whole kitchen making high-end food. My passion developed from there.”
She has cooked in upscale restaurants as well as camps and is now a chef at Andover Terrace in Salmon Arm.
The former Prince George resident developed a desire to explore what she calls flavour profiles and to teach people how to cook relying on their noses rather than their tastebuds.
Little, who works four days on and four off, operates her own company called Cariboo Culinary and offers a chef-at-home service, workshops and home parties.
The Art of Scentual Cooking and Creating Your Own Spice Blends utilizes the material Little is including in a book she is writing by the same name.
The host of the home party participates at no charge and the others – a minimum of five – pay $100 each.
“We spend time learning how to cook with the nose, why smell is important to cooking and how to tell your cake is cooked by nose alone, for example,” she says, noting she includes a bit of science and history and has participants identifying herbs and spices blindfolded and taste testing before creating.
“Participants will create their own flavour profile that they will package and take home, along with training material which includes some of my recipes and is a great future reference for them.”
The class is five hours long and Little supplies the food and materials participants use to create their own private label and packaging.
Little’s Chef at Home program grew from her research on diet and the effects food has on the body when her mom was diagnosed with cancer.
“I fed her a special diet featuring foods that matched her blood type and she’s in remission now,” Little says. “I’d like to think the food had something to do with that.”
Little also caters to those who are too busy or simply have no interest in cooking, but are concerned about nutrition and their health.
But it’s not all serious. Little is a bit of a trickster, preparing food that isn’t always what it seems.
“I made a ‘spaghetti’ ice cream,” she laughs. “The spaghetti was white chocolate and the meatballs were chocolate balls mixed in nuts… It freaks your senses out a bit.”
Little has a product line that includes the very popular sea salt-infused smoked Gutsy Garlic Chips, for which she holds a previsionary patent. They can be eaten like a snack right out of the bag, used in their flaked form as a cooking ingredient or put in a pepper mill and used as a garlic salt.
Gutsy Garlic is on some store shelves in northern B.C. and Little plans to bring the products farther south soon. To get in touch with Little, send an email to caribooculinary@gmail.com. Visit her website at www.culinarycariboo.com.
