Co-founder/Executive Chef – Kitchen on Fire

Host/Executive Producer – “Mastering Knife Skills” DVD

Host – TV’s “Organic Living with the Hippie Gourmet” and Circulon’s “Hungry Bytes”

Online Series Featured Expert – Analon Cookware and Furitechnics Cutlery Few know as much about the art of teaching cooking as Chef MikeC., who has led over a thousand classes to date.

The secret to his teaching technique? “I break things down into real world terms,” he says. “I always explain the science behind everything. If you understand the why when something goes wrong, you can easily fix it. You can adapt, you can make things work – if you understand it.” An honors graduate of the California Culinary Academy, Chef MikeC. began cooking professionally in 1997 in upstate New York in restaurants and a natural/organic foods grocer.

In 2000, he started his first catering business, “Cuisine Undressed”, before moving to San Francisco in 2001 to study at CCA. There he co-founded Xfusion Personal Chef Services - an originator of the concept of turning private parties into exciting cooking events for guests to participate in. While still in school, he was hired to co-manage Sur La Table’s San Francisco culinary school, where he also taught. Within months, MikeC. was put in charge of the program, which included assisting such visiting celebrity chefs as Martin Yan, Jamie Oliver, Alton Brown and Michael Chiarello.

In 2003, he founded Party Lifestyles and taught international cuisines at cooking schools and retail outlets up and down the West Coast as well as catering events for high-end clientele. At the same time, he became an official spokesperson for Furi Knives, appearing at trade shows and culinary fairs around the country to demonstrate proper knife skills. He recently took over hosting the long-running cooking show series “Organic Living with the Hippy Gourmet.” Over the years, MikeC. has taught thousands of home cooks and led countless corporate team-building cooking events for such companies as GAP, Yahoo, Microsoft, Adobe, GE, Capitol, and Charles Schwab.