It’s easy to lose sight of what traditional Mexican cuisine is when we’re surrounded by inauthentic dishes such as overflowing burritos and nachos drowning in liquid cheddar cheese. Chef Marcela Valladolid is here to show us that anyone can capture authentic Mexican flavors without the fuss. As Marcela always says, "there is no yellow cheese in real Mexican cooking."
Born in San Diego and raised in Tijuana, Mexico, the Food Network Chef jumped straight into a culinary life at an early age. Her grandfather was a chef in Mexico and her aunt opened one of the first cooking schools in Tijuana, Mexico where Marcela got her first job. She went on to study at the Los Angeles Culinary Institute and graduated as a classical French pastry chef from the Ritz Escoffier Cooking School in Paris.
Marcela’s passion for food and her classical training landed her a job at Bon Appetit magazine where she served as one of the magazines food editors. She was later cast on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart where she came in fourth.
In August of 2009, Marcela’s first cookbook, FRESH MEXICO: 100 Simple Recipes for True Mexican Flavor, will be released by Clarkson Potter. In the book, Marcela shatters the misconceptions about her native cuisine - she is a dynamic advocate for great Mexican food that delivers in freshness and flavor without forcing home cooks to track down hard-to-find ingredients or spend hours chained to the stove.
Between taping episodes of her cooking show, Relatos con Sabor, which appears on Discovery en Espanol in the U.S. and Latin America, Marcela runs her own catering company, teaches culinary arts to private groups in Tijuana and San Diego and raises the love of her life -- her four year-old son Fausto.
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Chef Marcela & Unilever To learn more about Chef Marcela’s association with Unilever and the promotion of their brands Hellman’s Mayo, Knorr, Ragu and Lipton Tea, please visit the following site www.vivemejor.com. |