Serving Up Celebrity Fare : The Country Flavor of Amestoy House Draws Top Chefs to Its Culinary Classroom Country Cooking School

Cheryl Amestoy gives much of the credit to Ellen Sherwood. Ellen Sherwood gives much of the credit to Cheryl Amestoy. They both give credit to a shared interest in cooking.

However they slice it, the two women have combined their efforts and interests to create the Amestoy House Cooking School in upper Ojai.

Amestoy, 47, is an interior designer by trade. She is founder and owner of the cooking school, which doubles as the not-so-private home she shares with husband Joe Amestoy.

Sherwood, 50, is the school’s director, bringing with her a background in business development, a culinary education and a Rolodex bubbling over with culinary phone numbers.

“It really takes a right brainer and a left brainer,” said Amestoy.

Since opening in February, the Amestoy House, which can accommodate 40 students per session, has presented three professional chefs, with two more scheduled to drop in this weekend. Six other celebrity chefs have been lined up through the beginning of August.

Participants, who pay $30 to $50 for each three-hour-plus class and meal, have included novice and professional food students. A fall schedule, which will include an additional series of less expensive classes for children and adults, is in the works.

This Saturday, John Ash, author and culinary director of the Valley Oaks Food and Wine Center at Fetzer Vineyards in Sonoma County, will prepare a multi-course meal and discuss the pairing of wine and food. On Sunday, Joanne Weir, a San Francisco-based author and chef, will prepare Mediterranean cuisine and share the history and culture behind it.

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As Amestoy and Sherwood have designed it, a visit to their cooking school is more than just a lesson in how to dice, chop, sautee and braise. It’s entertainment--for all of the senses.

“Other cooking classes are more clinical,” said Amestoy, a native of Santa Paula. “We offer a comfortable setting, out in the country, where you can enjoy chefs enjoying themselves.”

The school is housed in a picturesque 103-year-old structure that over the years has served as the one-room Upper Ojai Valley School, the repertory High Valley Theatre and an arts and crafts arm of Ojai’s Happy Valley School.

In the same room where elementary school students studied their academics, and audience members studied the actors on stage, cooking students now study the culinary skills of professional chefs.

Outside the home, a bamboo-lined pathway leads to the parking area behind the house, a grassy field loaned to the Amestoys by neighbor Shirley Robinson Bliss, whose ancestors owned the Amestoy residence in the 1890s.

To the side of the house is a half-acre garden of 300 to 400 herbs, succulents and indigenous plants grown by Amestoy, a member of the Herb Society of America.

A trained eye will spot garlic, leek, gourmet lettuces, Chinese and Japanese mustards, arugula, lettuce, Italian fennel, echinacea, chives, rosemary, lavender, sweet grass, eight varieties of mint, five edible flowers in bloom, a 20-foot bay tree, five manzanita trees, five cypress trees, three apple trees, three apricot trees, an olive, fig, peach and a pear tree. Mixed in with the plants is a fountain, a stream, a pond with a waterfall, a mini-amphitheater and a bell tower all designed by Joe Amestoy.

“It is absolutely charming and wonderful--very gracious with a warm inviting atmosphere,” said Vincent Schiavelli, an actor and touring chef, who in a visit this monthto the school prepared baked pasta with anchovies and artichoke pie as part of an Italian feast.

“Most cooking schools are not in such lovely bucolic settings. Most are in strip malls or in cooking stores,” he said. “This is exactly what a cooking school should be because what you are doing is basically asking people to open their mouths and put food in. If you have a snooty or snobby attitude, personally I don’t want to open my mouth.”

To set up a cooking school in this scenic, yet somewhat out-of-the-way location on Highway 150--just down the road from potter Beatrice Wood’s studio--is an idea that has simmered for years.

“It’s been a dream of mine,” Amestoy said. “I’ve taken so many cooking classes in L.A.--it’s so much fun watching chefs cook. Even if you can’t repeat their recipe, you can pick up a tool they used.”

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Since the Amestoys moved into their home in 1989, they have opened their doors for cooking demonstrations, a cooking class by Jordano’s Cooking School of Santa Barbara, garden tours, Ojai Music Festival fund-raisers, reunions and even a Transcendental Meditation New Year’s Eve Party, complete with sitar player.

“I like to cook and I love to entertain,” Amestoy said, explaining her tendency to roll out the welcome mat. “And being an interior designer, to have an audience go ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ validates you.”

It was at an Amestoy House gathering of the Southern California Culinary Guild last October that Sherwood and Amestoy met over the kitchen sink.

“I came to assist with the guild meeting and ended up doing the dishes,” said Sherwood. “After the meeting I said to Cheryl, ‘If you ever want to start a school, let me know.’ ”

Sherwood, a graduate of the professional series of cooking classes at Let’s Get Cookin’ school in Westlake, said she has had, from the start, a pretty clear idea of the type of school she wanted to establish.

“The public wants ideas they can successfully serve in their own homes with a sense of confidence,” Sherwood said. “They want people with credibility in front of them, with very good presentation skills, with ideas and creative techniques they can use in their own kitchens.”

Ash and Weir seem to fit the bill.

Ash makes guest presentations at schools, festivals, on television and on radio throughout the country, and is the author of “American Game Cooking” and “From the Earth to the Table: John Ash’s Wine Country Cuisine.”

Spending most of his time on the road, he said, he’s noticed a universal resurgence in recent years of people wanting to learn to cook.

“The ‘80s was a time when people didn’t cook at home so much. The idea was you went out to eat all the time. In the ‘90s, for whatever reason, people don’t care to go out all the time,” Ash said. “Cooking is fun, there’s a certain Zen. There’s been a return to grandma cooking--the idea that the home is a place where you find refuge and sustenance.”

On Saturday, Ash will prepare poblano and smoked chicken chowder with hominy; a salad of roasted beets, onions and potatoes with goat cheese; herb-roasted rack of lamb with sun-dried cherry sauce; and a warm chocolate souffle with ginger custard sauce.

“In the first part of the class we are going to explore what wine is all about,” said Ash, who will feature an aroma test for his audience. “There is just too much putting wine up on a pedestal. Wine is simple and it is meant to be enjoyed with food at a table. The enjoyment of the two things is not rocket science.”

Weir, whom Sherwood first saw while attending a class of her’s at Let’s Get Cookin’ last year, has a travel schedule similar to that of Ash. Her visit to Ojai is part of a nine-day, nine-school Southern California circuit.

“Teaching is really something that’s not easy. It’s three hours of standing up there, talking, cooking and making sense and it’s hard,” Weir said. “Fortunately, talking is second nature.”

Weir has a three-week teaching tour of Italy scheduled for May and June, and from June to August has a working trip planned for Tasmania, Australia and Singapore. She’s been teaching in Australia for six years and in America for four.

“In that period of time, my food has gotten simpler and simpler because people say they don’t have the time to cook,” said Weir, author of “From Tapas to Meze.”

“In every class, I used to do veal stock, but it’s hard enough to get people to make chicken stock,” she said. “I do a lot of Mediterranean food, which is strong in flavors, and is healthy with grains and legumes, and where the focus is olive oil.”

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At the Amestoy House, Weir will prepare crostini with spicy beans and greens, Tuscan three-onion soup, grilled bread with shaved Parmesan, wild mushroom pappardelle pasta with braised game birds, mushroom pasta dough, and chocolate gelato with dried cherries and maraschino.

Weir’s visit to Amestoy follows her appearance last Tuesday at Let’s Get Cookin’. Phyllis Vaccarelli, owner of the Westlake school, said the two cooking venues will likely offer the same teachers from time to time. But she’s not particularly concerned about an over saturation in the area.

“If everybody is filling a niche, that’s fine,” said Vaccarelli, whose 12-year-old school has a professional series, frequent guest chefs and a cooking store. “As long as we’re doing different menus, we will appeal to different people. Ventura County is pretty big.”

Like Sherwood and Amestoy, Vaccarelli said she sees a great demand for cooking classes.

“People are getting back into cooking as sort of a hobby,” she said. “A whole generation of people were without role models to show them how to cook because everybody was working. So now they need to learn to cook.”

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DETAILS

* CLASS: At 1 p.m. Saturday, Chef John Ash will present a wine-food class at the Amestoy House Cooking School, 8950 Highway 150 (Ojai-Santa Paula Road). Cost: $50.

* HISTORY: At 1 p.m. Sunday, Chef Joanne Weir will prepare a Mediterranean meal and discuss the history of the cuisine. Cost: $45. For reservations or information, call 646-7970.

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