What were your favorite foods growing up?
Mushrooms and mashed potatoes.

Where and when did your career in food begin?
At the French Culinary Institute in 1994, where I was asked to be a teacher assistant upon graduation.

What encouraged you to start Shanti Shack?
9/11 rocked New Yorkers to the core. I watched New Yorkers long to reconnect to themselves and to each other. As began to get back to normal, so did diabesity: the double whammy epidemic of onset diabetes 2 and obesity. This was not just a big deal to our workforce, but also to our children. The Shack was created to bring you back to yourself, family and friends. I wanted to provide insight and hands-on education as a means to change the way we eat, what we eat and who we eat with.

If you hadn't created Shanti Shack, what might you be doing instead?
I would be a veterinarian.

Who/what has shaped your cooking the most over the years?
Chef Sottha Khun taught me the precision of a bite: its collection of components, the cut and size of each ingredient, the articulation of taste within that bite and how the bite would be received.

How would you describe your cooking?
I temper haute cuisine techniques, flavor and attitude into healthy inventive everyday dishes.

What influences your cooking style and particularly the menu you create for Shanti Shack customers?
The story of our land and where we come from gives root to who we are, so I'm intrigued with ingredients and their road trip and love to create menus that focus on the renewed voyage of local and seasonal goods.

What are your favorite culinary weapons in the kitchen?
Patience, a microplane zester, y-peeler and a hand blender.

What is your favorite secret ingredient?
Fresh ginger.

What makes Shanti Shack different from other cooking aids?
You are the energy you eat, and eat the energy you are. Shanti is the Sanskrit word for "peace" and the shack is your first house, or your body. Through the Shanti Shack, I teach you how to take the chaos out of the kitchen and stir stillness into the pot as well as into your life.

What was the most challenging meal you had to make? Why?
Timballo di maccheroni for a Le Cirque client in the middle of a 400-person lunch rush.

Which aspect of culinary creation do you enjoy teaching the most?
The expression of pleasure.

What is your least favorite food?
Mesclun salad.

What is your beverage of choice?
Spicy red wine.

What are some recent dining and culinary trends you have been observing?
A grassroots approach to diet, product pedigree, disease within the commercial food chain and growth of the Slow Food Movement.

When you are not at home, where are you eating?
Lupa.

Which foreign country inspires your style most?
All Mediterranean countries.

What was the most spectacular meal you have ever had?
Thai food with this blazing chili oil in Woodside, Queens.

What is your best cooking tip for a home enthusiast?
The energy you put into your food is always the result. So create a little ambiance in the kitchen and be organized, clean as you go, light candles, open windows, groove to music and let your food rest ten minutes before you bite into it. You'll be amazed not just for the piece on your plate but for the peace in your heart.

What do you eat when you are home?
Anything Arrabbiata.