Published: April 08, 2008 03:38 pm            

Old mansion plus new hotel = Cooking school recipe in Savannah

TIFTON, Ga. — Hanging out in Darin Sehnert’s kitchen feels as comfy as leaning on the counter at family gatherings.

Difference is he’s a highly trained chef running a cooking school in Savannah, and he knows a whole lot about putting food and conversation together.

After taking his low country class in February I know more than I used to, but not so much that my vacation-to-relax was interrupted by too much paying attention.

Good combination.

That “Aw shucks, now I remember what I forgot at the grocery store” feeling changes from troubling to piece of cake because Chef Darin’s class in a fabulous hotel is all about knowing how things work and what to substitute.

“Chefs don’t make mistakes,” he told me watching my clumsy cutting techniques. “They just create new dishes.”

Excellent concept for my at-home kitchen.

And here’s another notion I embraced at the 700 Kitchen Cooking School attached to a bold, beautiful new hotel named the Mansion on Forsyth Park. This idea just might help me eliminate jumbled piles of dog-eared recipes torn from magazines and newspapers.

“A group of ingredients paired with a group of techniques,” Chef Darin says, “is a recipe.”

So with a few more classes, maybe I can cook out of my head instead of wondering where I might have put a recipe I clipped. I kept Chef’s business card with one hole punch where there used to be a drawing of a chef’s tall hat. Four more punches and I get a free class.

Low country cuisine was the three-hour focus traveling partner G.W. Tibbetts and I signed up for. We know how to do the big pot of sausage, corn, shrimp and sometimes potatoes called a low country boil, but we wanted to know more.

“The single most important influence on this good food was the people of West Africa,” Chef Darin tells the class right after we don our aprons.

“Long slow simmering over a fire was necessary for them because they had so many jobs to do, and such long days of hard work.”

Fixing grits? “Cook them very slowly over low heat for an extended period of time,” he says. “The other secret to flavorful creamy grits is to use a combination of chicken stock and milk, much better than water alone.”

We learned how to fix black-eyed pea salad, and guess what? Chef says it’s best made a day in advance so the flavors can marry. Dijon mustard, dried oregano, grape tomatoes, fresh basil, kosher salt and red wine vinegar are part of the marrying with the peas, red onion, celery and green pepper.

Cheddar and chive biscuits, shrimp in red eye gravy and fried green tomatoes filled our morning agenda too, with pineapple mint tea, and the pecan praline angel food cake we made for dessert.

It’s easy to walk off the meal after class. The 700 Kitchen Cooking School is in Savannah’s historic district and buildings and parks dating back to the 1733 founding are easy to access via trolley tours right outside the kitchen door.

Forsyth Park across the street is old too, set aside in 1840 for recreation. Today the 300 acres are lush and lovely with smooth sidewalks and the fountain made famous in the “Garden of Good and Evil.”

World War I troops trained here; dummy forts were added in 1909. Students at the Savannah College of Arts and Design strummed guitars and tossed Frisbees the afternoon I strolled there, but just as many people of all ages claimed the park benches, circled the fountain and walked to the park perimeters to admire architecture on surrounding streets.

The Georgia Historical Society on the corner of Whitaker and Gaston streets is one you can get in; others are private homes but well worth some gawking from the sidewalk.

With the Mansion in sight on Forsyth Park’s east side, my room reserved and cooking school accomplished, I wanted to figure out just how this property fits together.

Hard to tell if the cooking school kitchen is upstairs or down in the 1888 Victorian Romanesque building with arches and turrets because you head up a handsome stairway, past a trendy bar and six gallery dining rooms and then down a small stairway to get to class.

That’s in the Mansion part, an 18,000-square-foot, two-story, brick and terra cotta former residence with a prior stint as a funeral home and synagogue.

Get to cooking school early and plan to stay late to walk around and around because this Mansion is a beautiful place. Bold colors, chandeliers of many shapes and hues everywhere, each distinctly different from the other. Lots of windows and light, original oak millwork, mahogany and teak paneling and molding.

Interesting spaces too: cozy bars and lean-on-the-counter bigger bars, wine cellar, breakfast room and restaurant.

A different chef dazzles diners here, whether they’ve been to cooking school or not. Heading the dining room and other on-site restaurants is Executive Chef Michael Grove, known as Chef Dusty to repeat diners. Based on the long, lingering dinner we enjoyed, he’s at the top of his game.

Scallops with celery root puree and truffle vinaigrette led the way to a roast duck breast with caramelized pear. I wished it possible the apple and endive salad could be taught in the cooking school to know how to add in the hazelnuts, dried cranberries, maple vinaigrette and to learn about mimolette, the nutty flavored French cheese from Calais served with this amazing salad.

Marrow bone potatoes, roast shallot and fennel accompany Chef Dusty’s venison. I love to run my fingers through the fennel leaves on the feathery plant in my yard, but I haven’t learned to cook with it yet.

The AAA Four Diamond hotel next door is a three-year-old four-story building with its own arches and turrets and a massive art collection. Four hundred pieces at least I was told.

Like these bold, strong-color works? Take ‘em home. No problem working out a deal. Seems the brains behind the Mansion on Forsyth Park is Richard C. Kessler, a native Georgian who selects the art for each of his dozen hotels, and he’s glad when visitors appreciate the artists as much as he does.

Stay here and you’ll get to know the style of German painter Peter Kiel and French artist Jean Claude Roy, along with mosaics by Laura Dinello who uses canvas, not tiny tiles. They tumble down the hallways, draw you into your room and join yet more works in the adjoining Grand Bohemian Gallery.

Italian columns reportedly more than 200 years old support the lobby, even more columns hold up yards of flowing white fabric creating a tent in the courtyard, begging for a party and framing the view of the heated pool backed by a water wall, gently flowing over tiny tiles.

Look up often because the lights change everywhere. No basic packages light this hotel.

I found 41 elegant hats behind glass in the walkway between the hotel and the Mansion, worn in the 1860s up through the1920s. I could imagine my mother and grandmother in some of these — horsehair with cream silk, fancy sewn straw braid and red organza roses.

Finding the boutique size spa is a good idea too, with its four-treatment rooms. Lights here are amazing again, in a calming way, with reflections on the walls and behind cascading water.

Mansion Bliss is what director Courtenay Small calls the 80-minute signature treatment she developed involving Swedish massage, aromatherapy, reflexology and head massage, plus some hot stones if you like.

“We keep things uncomplicated for the weary traveler,” Small says.



Christine Tibbetts writes for The Tifton (Ga.) Gazette.