Other People's Kitchens. Q&A with Christi Flaherty
As a private chef, her favorite request was when a client gave Christi carte blanche access to his wine cellar.
Hello Christi. Can you briefly introduce yourself?
I'm
, Private Chef having worked in Napa Valley and DFW areas and holistic nutritionist. I realized after dabbling in lots of things related to health, wellness and food that my super power is helping people simplify eating healthfully + deliciously.My Substack: REAL FOOD SANITY exemplifies this super power by providing weekly meal plans that taste great and use foods our great grandparents would recognize. Each Thursday a well-organized PDF is sent out containing 4 meal plans using only 2 inexpensive proteins with seasonal recipes which are gluten friendly (with subs for other dietary restrictions or for those eating gluten) and full of flavor due to the easy sauces, dressings and easy spice blends I share each week.
To get ahead, there's also an optional meal-prep guide for a 1-2 hour component prep sesh for 15-20 minute "pull-together" meals during the week, though many of my subscribers like the wind-down effect of cooking fresh each night. Either way, they make life so much easier, not having to think about that annoying "What's for Dinner?" question that can drive us all insane.
How would you describe the layout of your kitchen and how much of a role does it play with your family and when writing and testing recipes for your Real Food Sanity newsletter?
My kitchen is quite literally the center of my household. It’s the very first thing you see when you walk in the front door of our small shotgun style house. It’s a very open floor plan with kitchen/dining/living all being one large room and the only partitions being the island in the kitchen, my dining room table and my living room seating area. I live here with my husband and 21 year old son who just returned home after ending his career as a student athlete baseball player and who is, in his words, “figuring out life”. 🤣
Though I dream of having a cooking studio with lighting and equipment for photos and videos, right now, I’m writing and testing while life happens around me. If I video, I do try to wait til the house is quiet and everyone is either gone or upstairs in their office/room.
What are your favourite and most used kitchen gadgets and why?
My first thought was none since I tend to stay away from gadgets, as in the kitcschy kind that are one trick ponies. However I do have a few favorite small appliances that would fall into the gadget category I suppose.
I use my air fryer on the regular! It’s a workhorse for cooking fish and chicken in under 10 minutes. My Instant Pot is my BFF when I forget to thaw something because I can easily throw frozen meat in there and, with only a touch of a button have a main course ready within an hour or so while I keep working.
And finally, I use a food processor at leats once every 2-3 weeks to make homemade mayonnaise as well as for other tasks. I love it, though, because I can make mayo without seed oils and the tiny hole in the food pusher drips the oil in one drip at a time, just like I would do, but I don’t have to stand there and do that. I’m a little ADD so standing still for that long and dripping oil is definitely not in my wheelhouse! 😉
You are embarking on doing some Cookery Videos and Cookery Classes, can you please tell us something about them? Will you be hosting these in your kitchen?
Yes, over the years, I’ve taught hundreds of students in a variety of venues and formats. The first classes were in a cooking school and that was ideal. I could teach 40 at a time. However, when I moved to Napa Valley, I began to revamp and teach out of my home when I had the space, and when I moved to a home where I didn’t, I began to take it to other people’s homes. I would have one person host and invite her friends in exchange for a free ticket for her portion of the class.
I also hosted online classes. Believe it or not, it was post-pandemic. I was in the middle of getting my holistic nutrition certification during the pandemic, so I wasn’t teaching anything. But in 2021, I tried out a now defunct platform called AirSubs after I learned about it when I was attending one of
classes. The platform did all the background work and payments to allow creators to host online cooking classes. I found I really liked it, but the classes weren’t very well attended.I continued to do online classes outside the platform, however, when I was running Whole30 Coaching Groups. I was a certified Whole30 coach for 2 years until they discontinued the program last November.
I plan to try and start creating video content regularly and will start hosting online cooking classes for all my paid subscribers sometime in the near future after I get fully transitioned over to my new Substack website.
What tips can you give us that will help keep our kitchens neat and tidy, and easy to manage?
Generally, I’m not a super neat and tidy person. My husband comes behind me and straightens out my spice jars so all the labels face the same direction. I’m just not super detailed which is why I’m a cook, not a baker. As I said, I have ADD tendencies and having to pay attention to details escapes me many times. That said, I do at least have all my spices in matching 4 oz mason jars with cute little labels (photo) and I organized at least one shelf of my pantry with labeled containers. I felt pretty accomplished in the world of organization with these two areas being somewhat neat.
Among your many skills, you are also a Private Chef. Without breaking any NDA ( Non Disclosure Agreements) are you able to share any stories about this?
Sure. I haven’t cooked for any major celebrities, but I did cook for a few winery owners and their families in Napa Valley. They were all down-to-earth so no drama stories to spill. And not once did anyone make outlandish requests, like make beef tenderloin for their fur baby.
My favorite request was when a client gave me carte blanche access to his wine cellar and asked me to pair 4 of the wines with food plus a special bottle for his wife’s 40th birthday. While the majority of the dinner centered around me telling a story about Napa and Sonoma with the food and wine since they had spent many vacations there throughout their marriage, the star bottle was a Sauternes he had purchased in France from her birth year. They opened it that night with dessert and he kindly stepped away mid-dessert to the kitchen to bring me and my husband (AKA sous chef, server, dishwasher, etc.) a small glass to try.
I think the thing that really set me apart when I was in the throes of my private chef career a few years ago was I was known for my knowledge about using food as medicine. The same client I was just writing about also asked to have their family meals taken to a friend one week when they found out their friend had brain cancer. (Obviously they were super kind people!) That family continued having me cook for them while the mom was undergoing treatment and I was able to cook the special nutrient rich food they needed. They passed my information along to friends with cancer and other chronic diseases and that became my client list. It also is what drove me to go to nutrition school so I could understand the why behind food being medicine.
Is there anything missing in your kitchen that you would love to have?
I worked with commercial designer Robin Pasley to create the kitchen of my dreams at my last house, but we sold it to downsize and get out from under a giant pool and an acre of land to tend. The things I miss are mostly from that kitchen:
Induction stove. I didn’t even need an electric kettle for tea…it heated in 30 seconds, which was less than the kettle I had used before I had induction.
Auto Faucet - You know the ones you wave your hand over? I never thought about needing it until I got it then I loved it. When you’re working over a whole chicken or other meat, it’s nice to not have to contort to get your elbow to the handle.
Trash Drawer (next to sink) - I have a trash drawer that holds a trash receptacle and recycling, but it’s not by my sink, so I have to have someone open it then carefully take all my refuse to it.
Ice Maker - I didn’t have this at the other house, but I still want it. I know most of the world doesn’t drink beverages with ice, but in Texas, ice is everything. I love nugget ice (like crushed ice), which is the tiny pieces that make Tiki drinks so fun, and there’s a standalone nugget ice maker you can hook up to your kitchen water lines.
How would you describe the regional cuisine? Are there fresh food markets or farmers’ markets available where you live? Do you grow your own food?
Let me start from the last question and work backwards. In Texas, at least where I live, we have lots of clay and rocks. We tried really hard to grow a garden and sort of succeeded but after many years of not much yield, we decided to pay our local farmers who know a lot more than we do.
So yes, we do have farmers’ markets. We have two in the area, and I usually hit both. Sadly, only one is in a walkable urban area. The other is a bit out of the way, but it’s where the farmers are that I’ve frequented for years. I just go where they go.
Our best known regional cuisine is barbecue. When we say barbecue in Texas, we aren’t talking about a grill, we’re talking long-smoked meats with a sweet or sweet-hot sauce. It’s a thing of beauty and outlandish flavor when done well.
The other thing Texas is known for is Tex-Mex which is Mexican inspired but that’s about it. Tex-Mex focuses on tons of cheese and big, rich flavors so I actually prefer regional Mexican cuisine because it uses more fresh produce and is much lighter. For instance, a classic Tex-Mex dish is cheese enchiladas, which is a ton of gooey cheese wrapped in tortillas and topped with a meaty chili sauce served with rice and beans. It’s a carb and cheese fest. A classic Mexican dish might be a sopa, which is a small corn disk topped with mashed beans, shredded poached chicken and salsa. Simple and so much lighter.
How many cookbooks do you have, and what are your favourites? Have you written any books?
Haha. I was just telling my husband yesterday he needed to move out his wine and cocktail book stash to make room for more cookbooks. Just on my desk, I have 17. I have another box in my garage and have no idea how many are in there. I still like perusing cookbooks so even with access to so many digital recipes, I can spend hours looking at cookbooks.
And now, I haven’t written any full cookbooks. I have a few e-books, but that’s about it. It’s a true dream and aspiration to write a cookbook, and I’m hoping being on Substack will one day afford me that opportunity.
Do you have a recipe to share with us? Perhaps a popular one, requested by one of your private clients.
My chimichurri sauce is probably my most frequent request. It’s so easy and will transform your Wednesday roast chicken to dinner party status. It’s truly a rockstar sauce!
Get the Recipe > Chimichurri Sauce.
Thank you for sharing your kitchen with us,
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All images are copyright of Rachel Flaherty.
Read more from the series Q&A: Other People’s Kitchens.
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Thanks for “peeking” into my kitchen!
What a fun peek into Christi’s kitchen!