Epicurean expert
Gilda Latzky
Gilda loves to get everyone involved in cooking, and her goal is to improve people’s experience with food. Her love for food and convivial approach to meal preparation inspires that same enjoyment in her students. Currently, Gilda is the owner/proprietor of a local business offering gourmet catering and personalized cooking classes, and instructor for cooking classes through UNM Continuing Education at UNM.
She is an energetic person with an interesting and unusual background. Gilda founded and ran her own business in New York City, The Epicurean Gallery, where she taught French and Italian cuisine and baking for 27 years. Even though the Gallery was doing well, Gilda visited New Mexico often “because she just couldn’t stay away.” She attracted the attention of the press over a decade ago, when she drove back and forth from New York City to New Mexico many times a year (with her entire kitchen in her car!) to teach cooking throughout the Southwest. Her students began requesting that she expand her roster to include private classes and custom classes. The intense interest in her teaching and cooking created her business, and enabled her to relocate, redefine herself and thrive in New Mexico.
Gilda has a knack for helping people to relax, get comfortable and get involved and enthusiastic in meal preparation. Her interest in cooking began in childhood, coached by her family. Her great aunt and grandmother made quite an impression on her early memories. They entertained often, and guests loved the food so much they would comment that the family cooks should start a business catering and teaching how to cook. Her aunts were very enterprising and willing to try different ventures. “They even made money during the depression,” says Gilda. Her aunts were in the hotel business and her father was in the meat business, so Gilda grew up learning the various aspects of food as a profession.
Gilda’s classes teach a diverse range of cuisine from all over the world: The Art of Baking, Woking in America: Chinese Cooking, Classic French Cuisine, Exploring the Cuisine of India and Northern Italian Cuisine. Gilda has conveyed her zeal for cooking into the initiative to start up more than one successful business in her career, and she shares her acumen and boldness with her students in How to Cater Your Own Party and The Business of Catering.
Gilda’s lifetime of delight in cooking and teaching is evident, and her students enjoy the subject right along with her. It’s a labor of love.
Gilda’s current classes may include:
Note: Titles above link to our online registration site, which does not post courses after they are held. Course lists are updated at the beginning of the semester. Depending on when you click a title on the list above, some items may have already passed. You may always refer to the course index or to the printed course catalog for course information.
Teach a class with us
Have you spent a lifetime of learning on a favorite subject? Is there something you can do that nobody else can do? You can teach a class with UNM Continuing Education!
Turn in a course proposal. (PDF file to download, instructions on the file.)
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Contact
For information call 277-6320 or email ddel@unm.edu
