Soul Food with Fresh Ideas

Private Caterer Cooks with Love and Aims to Please

Private Chef Suzanne Van Hatten plans to be at Soul Ranch for every meal and cook from her heart. Now that she is 60 and an empty nester, she has been gardening more and is ready, like you, to invest in herself. She will bring fresh pineapple sage and mint from her herb garden and shop for what’s in season.

“I expect there will be good squashes and pumpkins in September,” she says. “I love making homemade pasta and I just brought a gnocchi machine back from Italy.”

Growing up in a caterer’s kitchen made Van Hatten an expert at selecting the best in season fruits and vegetables. After working as a line cook and fine dining chef in Colorado and the Florida Keys, she settled down and had a family in Jackson. For the past 12 years she has been a catering from a commercial kitchen in her basement.

Simplicity, she has found, is an art in the kitchen and there are lots of ways to make food appealing simply. “For me, it’s all about eating fresher and cleaner,” she says. “I love to please people in the kitchen. I cook with love”

In the winter, she expands children’s palates in her cooking classes by preparing vegetables in various ways so that they can learn to bring out the flavors they like the most in wholesome foods.

“I’ll cook carrots four ways, with curry, ginger, dill and lemon zest and cinnamon, then I’ll ask them which they like best and why,” she says. “I’m constantly putting the herbs and spices under their noses.”

Her intuition and excellent improvisational skills makes it so that she rarely follows recipes in the field, but Van Hatten always willing to share her tricks and send you home with yummy recipes.