About Chef Samira Hradsky

After earning her MA and Doctorate degrees in Education and Human Development from George Washington University, Samira Harfoush Hradsky worked for many years in the government sector. Ten years ago, she decided to create her cooking school, "Food Unites the World," and has not looked back since.

Having lived in many places in the world, including the UK, Middle East, Europe, Africa, and the USA, she has melded the culinary education of her mother and grandmother, with that of cuisines around the world and her lifelong experience as a teacher. While primarily self-taught, Samira has attended classes at the Cordon Bleu, as well as other culinary schools. Now, having returned to Paris, her primary focus is, of course, on French cuisine, although she still continues to offer classes in other specialties as well.

A bit of history ...

The idea came about when a couple of friends, who were visiting us from the US, were with my husband James and I on the beautiful terrace of our home in Rabat, Morocco. We were all having a lovely quiet lunch while enjoying the cool Morocco fall breeze, the singing of the birds, and the colorful flowers in our garden. I was wearing a tee-shirt, on which was written "Education Unites the World". I told my friends how I always wanted to write a cookbook and share my culinary experiences and successes with other people from around the globe. We began to search for an attractive and capturing title for the book. Since my idea was to combine all types of food from around the world in one book, and given the slogan on my tee-shirt, we quickly agreed that the title "Food Unites the World" would be very appropriate.

A year passed, but it wasn't until my husband's work took us to Bamako, Mali (West Africa) that I actually began this project. I resigned from my consulting job and, for the first time in my life I became what I call home executive or what people usually refer to as a "housewife" -- I loved it. My husband's position required a great deal of entertaining and I found myself in the kitchen a major part of each day, experimenting and creating different tastes and flavors.

People started suggesting that I start a catering business or something that would permit me to share all these great recipes that I had created and prepared. Given my background as a university professor, I quickly hit upon the idea that I could organize my recipes and put them in writing so as to give cooking classes where I could prepare handouts for my students. With the encouragement of many people around me, I placed an ad in the Embassy's weekly newsletter offering gourmet cooking classes. The response was promising and I started a Saturday morning cooking school.

Thus was born "Food Unites the World Cooking School" in early 1998. The school now offers 10 ethnic cooking classes, each one concluding with the ultimate reward - sitting down around the dining room table and eating what we prepared in the wonderful company of class mates, complete with wine and background music that represents the nationality of the food we cooked.