The Cooking Demonstrations are an exciting element of the festival, which feature six local professional chefs and six one of a kind garlic recipes. Attendees can watch each chef demonstrate their unique recipe, ask questions, then enjoy a small sample of their hard work. Of course, garlic is an ingredient in all of the recipes that are prepared right before your eyes.
And we now have a Cooking with Garlic cookbook that is a compendium of the many recipes that have been demonstrated over the years as well as copies of some of the Chef Demo leaflets that accompanied the events.
Here are the 2022 chefs:
Saturday, October 1st, 11:30am: Nalini Goordial
For years, Nalini has cooked, studied and researched food and healing as she moved from South America (with roots in India) to New York, New Mexico, Colorado, and now Massachusetts. She finally decided to own this role and be intentional about it. Her goal is to share and serve those seeking inspiration, help, or advice. “Together we can travel this path, learning how to create recipes for wholeness, zero waste cooking and unveiling the mystery of spices among other things.” She has a booth at the Festival and sells her spices and tisanes at Kitchen Wizardry.
Chef and Instructor at the Stone Soup Café at the All Souls Church in Greenfield. They recently started formalizing a curriculum for students who want to learn culinary arts. Chef Shantie says, “what really excites me, is that teaching gives me the opportunity to share the wealth of experience I have gained from working in the culinary field for over half my life. The culinary program allows us to teach knife skills and life skills. Our small class sizes and personalized classroom experience will leave our students better prepared to excel in whatever fields they find themselves in.” – Ashley Shook & Kate Wilkinson, WWLP news
Raised in rural Massachusetts by counter culture parents, she got her first job in a restaurant at a small town roadside stand at age fifteen and has been working in the food industry ever since. After graduating with honors from the Oregon Culinary Institute, Althea spent time cooking in some of Portland, Oregon’s best kitchens including Oui! Wine Bar and Restaurant creating big flavors out of a tiny kitchen. After appearing on both Food Network’s Chopped and Guy’s Grocery Games, she was named Eater Portland’s 2019 Food Personality of the Year and landed a spot on the Eater 38 Essential Portland Restaurants list. After Oui! shuttered in 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Althea has been pursuing other passions like condiments! Her new condiment business, The Flavor Society, focuses on unconventional whimsical takes on her favorite flavors.
Featured in the 2021 fall issue of Worcester Living, Mark and Deni Ellis started Clamber Hill Inn in Petersham as a B & B in 1998, then opened a small restaurant at Clamber Hill in 2003. In addition to the restaurant, open to the public Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, Clamber Hill hosts monthly wine and spirit tastings with accompanying buffets.