As host of Sara's Secrets, which runs weeknights and weekends on the Food Network, Sara Moulton is one of the hardest-working women in the food biz.
Ask Sara how it all began and she will tell you, "I've always liked to eat." The idea of channeling this deep affection into a career, however, didn't occur to her until after she graduated from the University of Michigan with no particular major in 1974. And, indeed, it was at the Culinary Institute of America that Sara found herself. She graduated with highest honors in 1977 and commenced working in restaurants immediately, first in Boston and then in New York, taking off time only to apply herself to a postgraduate apprenticeship with a master chef in Chartres, France in 1979. Sara's restaurant experience peaked with a stint as sous chef at La Tulipe in New York in the early Eighties. It was also during this period that Sara co-founded the New York Women's Culinary Alliance, an "old girl's network" designed to help women working in the culinary field. The Alliance celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2002. In the interest of starting a family, Sara left restaurant work in 1983. She worked for a while as an instructor at Peter Kump's New York Cooking School, where she discovered her love of teaching, a passion that would give focus to her subsequent work on television. In 1984 Sara took a job in the test kitchen at Gourmet. Four years later she became chef of the magazine's executive dining room.
Sara was still toiling in restaurants when an opportunity opened up for her to work behind the scenes on public television's Julia Child & More Company in 1979. Her friendship with Julia led to Sara's gig at Good Morning America, where what started as another behind-the-scenes position ripened by 1997 into on-camera work. By then Sara had begun hosting the Food Network's Cooking Live. Six years and over 1200 hour-long shows later, Cooking Live ended its run on March 31, 2002. Sara's Secrets began the next day.
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