cooking school: Big Easy Taste

Poppy Tooker (shown here)  and two other chefs rotate classes the remaining days. “The food diva of New Orleans,” Poppy studied with cooking guru Madeleine Kamman. Poppy exudes wit and energy, and possesses an endless knowledge of New Orleans food history. She founded the New Orleans Slow Food chapter and has worked to save such traditional foods as Creole cream cheese from disappearing.

The chefs create their own curriculum, keeping seasonality at the top of the list, although each class includes at least one dish that involves making a brown roux, the flour-and-butter building block of many Creole dishes.

Photograph: Courtesy of NOCE

Recipes are at the end of this story.