The tender zucchini I was slicing for soup had just been picked in the organic garden at La Cocina Que Canta, the new cooking school at Rancho La Puerta, in Tecate, Mexico. Next to me, two men who had never fixed a meal before asked one of the five assistants how to peel garlic for the guacamole. A young woman was busy dicing celery, cucumbers and red peppers for a strawberry-tomato gazpacho; a couple was getting a lesson in handling jalapeños as they made seviche. Under the guidance of the animated chef, Jesús González, sixteen of us were putting together a dinner that also included a salad of roasted baby beets with watermelon, goat cheese and fennel; a tomato and roasted-pepper salad with a cilantro-parsley dressing; corn tortillas; and almond cookies. When it was ready, we sat at tables for four and ate our meal, which we'd made almost entirely from garden-fresh produce. The dessert, a chocolate sorbet, was even sweetened with butternut squash, and it was surprisingly good.
The 4,500-square-foot Cocina Que Canta (Kitchen That Sings), a nod to the birds that warble nearby, debuted last fall as the latest addition to Rancho La Puerta, the revered wellness retreat just across the border from San Diego. When it opened, in 1940, the ranch was called a "school for living," and although it has evolved with the times, that nickname still captures its essence. This is a place to learn how exercise, rest, reflection, healthful eating habits and a relationship with nature can lead to a longer, happier life. Rancho La Puerta's 3,000 acres encompass mountainous terrain for daily hikes, plenty of workout facilities and eighty-seven casitas surrounded by live oaks and fragrant herbs. Until now, however, there was no program to teach guests how to make balanced but flavorful meals at home — a wonder, considering that the resort has a six-acre organic garden that supplies vegetables to its kitchen.
Each week at Rancho La Puerta, up to 160 guests choose from a staggering array of exercise options and mind-body activities: painting classes, talks on nutrition, silent-meditation walks, African dance, drumming and, of course, spa treatments, which often incorporate seasonal indigenous herbs grown in the garden. Opening a cooking school was a natural progression for Deborah Szekely, the spa's founder and owner, who is increasingly concerned about today's obesity epidemic and culture of fast food. Eating on the run "fills the gut for about twenty minutes, and then you are hungry again," she tells guests. "The mind doesn't get the message."
Szekely decided that visitors should do more than simply eat the spa's inventive, mostly organic cuisine (such as exotic-mushroom soup and mahimahi in rice paper); they needed to learn how to produce it in their own kitchens. To show them, Szekely tapped González, a fifteen-year veteran of the Golden Door, the exclusive California spa that Szekely opened fifty years ago. Through a series of three-and-a-half-hour classes (sometimes available twice a day, five days a week) spagoers can create meals, beginning with selecting ingredients from the garden and going straight through to making the food and sharing it with others. The ultimate goal, of course, is finding satisfaction in the preparation as well as in the final product.
On my way into the school, I passed gardeners filling wheelbarrows with the day's harvest from long rows of plants in the rich, dark soil. I stepped into a large room with hand-hewn beams and floors of Talavera tile next to a Spanish Mission–style courtyard. Half the space was the kitchen: a thirty-foot maple prep counter, two six-burner stoves, stainless steel counters, All-Clad pots and pans, Wüsthof knives, powerful Vitamix blenders. Big bowls of vegetables and smaller containers of olive oil, spices and herbs sat near cutting boards.
Freshly blended fruit smoothies awaited me and my fellow students; we sipped them as González filled us in on the school's philosophy. "Use what's in season where you live," he explained. "And don't be afraid to make meals your own way." Then, with recipes in front of us, we went to work—chopping, sautéing, blending, tasting — and learned by doing. "It's hard to believe there are so many vegetables I've never seen before," marveled one of my classmates. Most of them admitted that they cooked very little at home, but the neophytes managed just fine. Those who were experienced enjoyed themselves too and took charge of the more complicated baking.
As we ate what we had made together, the lively conversation was less about what we'd mastered and more about ourselves. Communal meals are part of the fun in Rancho La Puerta's dining room, but those at the school were even more intimate, as if we were comrades, having been in the garden trenches together. We all agreed that not only did taking the classes give us basic knowledge, such as how to use a chef's knife skillfully, but the school, like so much at Rancho La Puerta, influenced us in a holistic way. After a week of exercising and eating nourishing food, we had more energy and a brighter outlook on life.
I'd love to feel that way all the time. Back home in New York, I can't hike up a mountain every day, but I can go to the farmers' market, gather my friends — and cook. Seven nights from $2,690; cooking classes $75 each. 877-440-7778; rancholapuerta.com.
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