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Cat Cora Turns Up the Heat

Executive Chef. TV personality. Restaurant owner. Philanthropist. Mother of two. Out lesbian.

Food Network star Cat Cora, 40, is all of these things, but it is the latter descriptor that still comes as a surprise to many of her fans. Although the celebrated chef has mentioned her partner in interviews since early 2005, she has kept a fairly low profile about it, often simply referring to Jennifer, 36, as “my partner” or “better half,” or using the nonspecific term “we.”

The Greek American’s official Food Network bio mentions only that “Cat resides in Northern California with her family, including her biggest fans, her two sons” and her official website, CatCoraCooks.com, mentions only her oldest son.

But in the Nov. 19th issue of People magazine, Cat posed with Jennifer and their two sons in front of a Thanksgiving dinner spread, making her sexual orientation known to millions of Americans.

Cat Cora, it seems, is finally putting it all on the table.

Cora grew up in a small Greek community in Jackson, Miss., in a family that celebrated cooking. “I loved entertaining from a young age,” she told People. “I had an Easy Bake oven and was serious about tea parties.”

She developed her first business plan for a restaurant at age 15, but it was the advice she received from the late chef Julia Child at a book signing that set Cora on the path to becoming a professional chef.

“Go to the Culinary Institute of America,” Child told the recent University of Southern Mississippi graduate, where Cora had majored in exercise physiology and minored in biology (because, she jokingly told Aventura magazine earlier this year, “at the time in Mississippi there wasn’t the ‘celebrity chef’ status”).

Cora applied and was accepted to the prestigious culinary school in New York. After graduation, she apprenticed with two master chefs in France, then returned to New York to work as a sous-chef before heading out to Northern California to work as chef de cuisine at Bistro Don Giovanni, a Napa Valley restaurant.

Cora made her television debut in 1999 as co-host of Food Network’s Melting Pot With Rocco Di Spirito. Over the next several years, she hosted or co-hosted several TV shows, including My Country My Kitchen: Greece (Food Network), Simplify Your Life (Fine Living) and Kitchen Accomplished (Food Network).

In response to the 2004 tsunami, Cora co-founded Chefs for Humanity in January 2005, an organization modeled on Doctors Without Borders that brings together “a grassroots coalition of chefs and culinary professionals guided by a mission to quickly be able to raise funds and provide resources for important emergency and humanitarian aid, nutritional education, and hunger-related initiatives throughout the world.”

The money raised by Chefs for Humanity so far has benefited UNICEF, Hurricane Katrina victims and other anti-hunger initiatives worldwide.

But things really began to take off for Cora in April 2005, when she was invited to be the first female challenger on the popular competitive cooking series Iron Chef America.

Shortly before her debut on Iron Chef, Cora told the San Francisco Chronicle that she was looking forward to proving that “women can cook alongside men just as hard and just as well. You don’t see that a lot on television. The shows are more how-to — ‘OK, we’re going to crack an egg and make a meringue.'”

Her appearance on Iron Chef was so successful that the Food Network asked her to stay on as a regular chef on the show, and the rest is culinary television history.

While Cora’s status as the sole female Iron Chef has brought her praise, and her quiet openness about her sexual orientation has generated little controversy, the same cannot be said about her decision to pose in a rather risqué photo shoot for FHM in September 2006.

While the increased visibility outside food circles did earn Cat some new fans — particularly of the male gender — she was criticized by some chefs and viewers for pandering for ratings and contributing to the objectification of women.

“I had been approached by Playboy, Playgirl, and I said, There’s no way I’m going to do that,” she explained to 7×7 magazine when asked about the FHM photos in a February 2007 interview. “But Rachael [Ray] had done FHM over three years before, and her agent and my agent are at the same agency, and hey, it didn’t hurt her career, so I said, Let’s do it once. I think it was cool. I’m an older woman and a mom, and it was fun for me to do one thing to show my femininity.”

She also showed her more feminine side when she attended a party hosted by the William Morris Agency on Feb. 23, 2007, in Miami Beach, Fla.

But most of the time, whether she’s efficiently chopping vegetables on Iron Chef or offering cooking tips in a magazine, you’ll find Cora in a chef’s uniform, with her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.

Cora has published two books so far: Cat Cora’s Kitchen (2004) — a collection of recipes inspired by her Greek and Southern heritage — and Cooking From the Hip: Fast, Easy, Phenomenal Meals (2007).

In addition to her Iron Chef duties and running her nonprofit, Cat is currently working on launching her own TV show, appropriately titled The Cat Cora Show, and on opening her first restaurant.

Cora credits her work and her partner for keeping her sane. “My work helps me stay balanced and happy when I am with my family,” she told ModernMom.com in December 2006. “My other half is super supportive and takes care of our son while I am on the road. It helps to have a spouse that you are on the same page with.”

She elaborated on their favorite family activities to ModernMom.com:

I love going out in our ski boat — we pack a picnic, boat, grill out on the sandbar, soak up the sun with my family (including our dogs!) and second, simply playing outside with my son while my partner gardens. It’s usually the end of the day, we play a little soccer or we work on Zoran’s baseball swing while the dogs steal the ball from us. Then, I get ready to make dinner, pour glasses of wine for us (soy milk for Zoran — he loves to give us a “cheers”) and we all have cheese and crackers. It’s such a comforting feeling to be home together.

Cora still likes to cook the family meals when she’s home, she told Redbook in May, because “the heart and soul of our family is in the kitchen.” But even she and Jennifer have nights, Cora admits, when they just “order in Thai food.”

Whether she’s whipping up a meal at home for her family, or whipping her competitors in Kitchen Stadium, Cat Cora is an out, world-class chef whose career is only getting hotter.

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