Carolina Gelen has come a long way. Raised in Romania by a mother who innovated in the kitchen, she trained in Park City restaurants as a J-1 visa holder and now is settled in Heber City as a full-time recipe developer, chef and cookbook author.
On June 14, she stepped onstage at the James Beard Media Awards in Chicago to receive a medal for her first cookbook.
“I can’t remember the last time I’ve been that nervous,” she said. “That suspense builds up so much – I started crying before they even got to my category.”
The award was the biggest recognition yet of a lifetime spent honing skills in the kitchen. Gelen got her start in cooking as a young child at her mother’s side in the Transylvania region of Romania.
The family didn’t have a lot of money, so they almost always cooked meals at home. Gelen said playing sous chef to her mom gave her an instinct for combining flavors and improvising with what was available.
“I never saw her [my mother] follow a written recipe, whether it was for a salad, for dessert, for soups – she always knew her way in the kitchen,” she said. “And I think growing up around her gave me the confidence to tap into cooking without having a recipe or ingredients or instructions written down for me.”
In college, Gelen majored in computer science but found herself increasingly drawn to cooking. In the summers, she traveled to Park City to work in restaurants. And she started posting about her recipes on social media and “slowly but surely” amassed a following.
Recipe websites began reaching out. After Gelen produced a few videos for The New York Times Cooking and some recipes for Food52, her career in food began to take off.
She said she loves seeing people bring her recipes to life – like an upside-down orange olive oil cake, one of her most popular recipes.
“You flip the cake and you’re showcasing this beautiful, glossy pattern of candied oranges on the top,” she said. “They look like little gems. It’s very beautiful, and I think that first impression that people have when they see the cake really makes them want to make it.”
She said it never gets old to see the photos people share while creating her recipes.
Gelen’s recipes are available in her cookbook, on her website and in her newsletter.
