This is a past class that no longer accepts registration.
Elevate your cooking with our “Spice and Herbs Skill Building” class. Explore the bold flavors of spices and herbs as you create crispy za’atar roasted chickpeas on a fresh herb salad, jerk-spiced chicken with beans and rice, and chai-spiced oatmeal breakfast cookies. Gain confidence in balancing flavors and using spices to transform everyday dishes into culinary masterpieces.
Course Dishes:
- Crispy Za’atar Roasted Chickpeas on Herb Salad
- Jerk Spiced Chicken with Beans and Rice
- Chai Spiced Oatmeal Breakfast Cookie
To participate in this course you will be required to review and sign our Acknowledgment of Risk. Please click the button below to review, sign, and submit the waiver prior to class.
Please direct any questions to Programs Coordinator, Adrianne Ong, adrianmo@hs.uci.edu
Instructor: Jessica VanRoo, Executive Chef
In the skilled hands of Jessica VanRoo (“Chef Jess”), food becomes medicine that melts in your mouth.
A professional chef with two decades of experience and a culinary management degree from Art Institute of Orange County, VanRoo has a keen understanding of the power of food. This awareness feeds her passion for teaching people tips and techniques for preparing food that tastes great and can improve health.
VanRoo is executive chef of the UCI Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute’s Mussallem Nutritional Education Center, a teaching kitchen where whole health flourishes through food as medicine. She is the creative chef who develops institute programs that please the palate and promote culinary medicine. Her menus are rich in produce, reflecting the influence of her upbringing in Taiwan.
Under VanRoo’s leadership, nutritional education center instructors – professional chefs and registered dietitians, often accompanied by physicians – connect the dots between food and health in programs for health professionals, patients and community organizations. She has also equipped the eight-station teaching kitchen and dining space to support group medical visits and culinary medicine research that involves meal preparation and service.
