Marilena Leavitt is a Greek who trained as an economist. But when she married an American working at the US embassy in Athens, life took them en poste to England and to Italy where she took cooking classes. Now she passes on her knowledge of the dishes of Northern and Southern Italy and Greece to small groups in her Virginia home.

And she has plenty of knowledge. You won't just get taught how to produce a meal. You'll be taught a little about the background to the dishes. If you show up for one of her Italian classes, for instance, she'll begin with an introduction about the food culture and why cooking in the north of the country uses only butter or lard, while oil is the fat component in the south. She divides her Italian classes loosely between North and South to try and muster some precision.

"I can't say Italian cooking. There are 20 different regions with distinct cooking styles." 

Once the recipes have been introduced, the class sets about cooking them. "Everybody participates. But if someone tells me, I learn better if I watch, that's fine with me." Except for one detail in a Greek cooking class: "I want them to wrap up at least one spanakopitakia. Working with phyllo dough, it's really not such a problem." Even something as simple as chopping onions can intimidate, with some people, she says, assuming that the job has to be done really perfectly. Sometimes if Leavitt has a lengthy menu, she'll do the prep work on chopping ahead of time because the more important thing her students should witness is the procedure for making the dish. And if she's cooking a Greek dessert, she'll probably have baked one the night before since a well-achieved phyllo pastry needs plenty of time to absorb a large quantity of syrup. "We'll reassemble another one in class."

Leavitt was born in north west Greece, in Ioannina. She went to Athens to study economics, then worked briefly for IBM after which she landed at the American Embassy in the Greek capital where she met her husband. When they were sent to Italy on the first of two postings there, she spent a year at culinary school in Rome, taking her 4-month old daughter Elizabeth with her in her baby carrier. Leavitt loved the experience so much she found herself wondering why she had ever bothered with economics.

"I grew up in an environment in Greece where everybody cooks all day long. You wake up in the morning and smell cooking and hear sounds in the kitchen. It's not like here where at 5 o'clock you start to think about putting something on the table. In Greece you are thinking early in the morning about what to eat, doing the shopping, making something wonderful. Being in Italy, it was the same thing."

By the time she and her husband returned to Rome, she had three children. Through the PTA at their school she began to give informal classes in Greek cooking. Once they were back in the US and her children in High School, Middle School and Elementary School, she realized she could take the idea of classes more seriously.

"People in the neighborhood knew I had been in Greece until my late 20s. They said, cook something for us, show us how you do it."

They recommended her to their book groups, suggested her for school fund-raising events. She puts classes together twice a week at her home or holds them in other people's houses, for a minimum of six people. "It can be as many as can fit around the dining table. We have been as big as 11 and 12! I can't do more than twice a week - I have to do the shopping, write up recipes, convert the recipes from metric to pounds and ounces. I have to make the house look good because you eat with eyes as well and it takes time set a table." Recipes are discussed over coffee and biscotti (or voutigmata if it's a Greek class) and once the cooking is complete, the class sits down to eat it with wine.

"My biggest satisfaction," Leavitt beams, "is when people call me back and say I made the whole meal for the family and it was great!"

Call 703 281 0342 for prices and location.

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