My Cooking School

04 Jan My Cooking School

We all learn to cook in different ways. As I look back there are four reasons that lead me to a love for cooking. The first two were my Mother and Grandmother. They were both fantastic cooks! As a kid one of the highlights in visiting my grandparents were the meals or maybe I should call them feasts…. Italian feasts. My Grandmother was a real Italian cook. To this day there is no ravioli that has ever been as good as hers and nothing has ever come close. Using her recipe my entire family says my recreations comes the closest. I have to say as a kid I ate great! Every night my mother prepared us to a fabulous home cooked meal. My mother also always had an incredible resource to the best ingredients Which leads me to the third cooking influence in my life and this one was a big one.
‘The Grocery Store’
While growing up on Long Island, NY I work in my fathers grocery stores. By the age of 12 I was working 15 to 18 hours a week. By the age of 22 I was living in Boca Raton, Florida running my family’s grocery store “Woolley Fine Foods”. Woolley’s was a store that was 20 years ahead of the times. There were no stores in the United States that compared to Woolley’s. We had a team of chefs that came from some of the best hotels and restaurants in the country. For over 15 years Woolley’s was known as ‘The #1 Gourmet Grocery Store’ in the country’. We were operating what could have been a dozen restaurants all under one roof. When I think back how we would cook hundreds of elaborate Thanksgiving day meals with all the traditional fixings in one day, to being the official caterer for the reopening of the Statue of Liberty celebration in New York City on 4th of July for President Reagan and Lee Iaccoca. It was cooking at a entirely unique level!
‘Morada Cafe’
The fourth credit that I must give is to my dear friend Chef Andrew Swersky, our friendship started with Morada Cafe and continues today, hes a three time James Beard winning chef and has been honored with just about every other honor a chef could receive and he cooks for my family several times a year and each time its an exciting day to learn something new.

Over the years I have collected and created many wonderful recipes that family and friends always rave about, this book has a nice assortment of them. But most importantly always have fun when cooking.

Enjoy!

Scott Woolley