Drawing inspiration from a culinary legend as well as her own beloved grandmother, Nicole Flowers is teaching folks how to cook flavorful homemade meals.
Nestled into the historic Bracken Village shopping community sits The Culinary Cottage. As the name suggests, it’s a cooking school for all ages in a historic HIll Country house.
Owned by a self-declared “foodie,” the business came to be quite by accident.
“This all began in early 2016,” says Nicole Flowers, founder. “The Christmas before I began, a friend asked me to teach her daughter how to cook. She would come over to my house in Terrell Hills, we’d have a lesson, and she’d take she’d made home for dinner.”
Word got around fast about what was brewing in Flowers’ kitchen.
“Within a week my phone was ringing off the hook. Within six months my husband said ‘You have to move this out of the kitchen.’”
Luckily, the couple had a structure—“a casita behind the garage”—that converted readily into a small culinary teaching space.
“That was in place by October, and it could really only hold four, maybe five people max. It was tiny, but we made it work.”
“Making it work” is as much a part of Nicole’s business approach as it is her method of teaching others to cook. Where other schools may try to to dazzle students with high-end gas ranges and other fancy trappings, Nicole prefers teaching her students—from ages 8 to 80—using the supplies and equipment found in a typical modern home.
“It’s important for me to teach people how to cook here in a way they can cook at home.”
Indeed The Culinary Cottage’s new 900-square-foot space between San Antonio and New Braunfels evokes the warmth of a cheerful family abode. Nicole and her husband, T.J., handled the renovations to the historic structure, which reportedly dates to 1915. The high ceilings, warm colors, and gleaming kitchen supplies serve to entice even the most reluctant students.
Although Nicole has taken classes at the Culinary Institute of America, Sur La Table, and Central Market, she says it is a Julia Child quotation—“No one is born a great cook. One learns by doing,” spelled out in bold letters on a cottage wall—that most informs her work.
“Cooking is a stress reliever from me. I want to show people how to love it, too. But food smells fear, so one has to work to learn how to make it do what we want. . . . I watch students arrive, feeling stressed overwhelmed. And then as the class goes along I see them soften, open up. They leave feeling, for lack of a better word, refreshed.”
Excellent ingredients (local when possible) coupled with a clear process are essential to her classes, whatever the age of her students.
“With our kids classes, it isn’t about easy mini pizzas and cute cupcakes. Our children’s classes aren’t too far off from adult classes, frankly, with fresh vegetables and easy-to-find ingredients. My goal with all of the classes is to create great cooks.”
Nicole’s own culinary roots extend back to her own Greek grandmother, a woman who made elaborate, delicious meals for a large family without referring to recipes.
“My grandmother showed us love through her cooking, which she did on an enormous scale. It made her happy to see us come together and enjoy her food, even if we didn’t fully appreciate how much work she put into it. That’s a lost art really, feeding others. So many ‘homemade’ meals today use pre-prepped or processed ingredients. I fear that we’re losing a sense of what real food with all natural ingredients tastes like. Yet real food creates healthy eating habits which in turn create better health. Cooking at home is essential, and it can be a family legacy.”
Pamela Price is the founder of TheTexasWildflower.com.
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The Culinary Cottage is located at 18771 Nacogdoches Road in Bracken (a community within San Antonio). The telephone number is 210-535-8912. For more information on the school, including a list of upcoming classes and featured recipes see their website, TheCulinaryCottage.net. You can also follow the business on Facebook and Instagram.
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