A slice of celebrity

Audience members leaned forward in their chairs or scribbled notes in the auditorium of the Costa Mesa Senior Center on Saturday as chef Robert Danhi extolled the virtues of exotic flavors like dried shrimp, fish sauce and green mango.

“Don’t be afraid, it’s just a mango,” Danhi told the group of seniors, as well as several younger people, as he deftly sliced the large, green fruit into julienned slivers for a plate of green mango salad.

“I could talk all day long about fish sauce,” he said, waving a bottle of the stuff in the air and audience members took notes on where to buy the odiferous condiment.

Danhi, an author and expert on Southeast Asian cuisine, was the latest visitor to the senior center as part of its celebrity chef series.

The program, which has brought acclaimed chefs to the center for cooking demonstrations this summer, has been such a hit that senior center Program Director Darryl Kim is already talking about inviting the chefs back later this year.

“When most people think of a senior center, they think of people with gray hair playing bingo,” Kim said. “We wanted to do something young and fun.”

Kim knew Danhi from junior high school, and invited him to visit as part of the chef series.

Chef Alexx Guevara and restaurateur and cookbook author Zov Karamardian have also visited. Karamardian, whose recipes have been featured in Food and Wine magazine and the Los Angeles Times, showed seniors how to make roasted tomato-basil soup one weekend.

“The food thing is really a fad right now with shows like ‘Top Chef,’ so there’s that, too’” Kim said.

Participants paid $35 a piece to watch Danhi prepare dishes like Malaysian soy and spice-simmered pork flavored with exotic spices like star anis and a tart with coconut jam.

“I’ve had people tell me that it’s very educational, and they like all the information they get,” Kim said.

Participants also get to sample the food during the demonstrations.

“This has been a great, last-minute adventure,” said Ruth Levin, who attended Danhi’s demonstration.

Levin found out about the cooking demonstration while taking an exercise class at the senior center Saturday morning and had to stick around to try out the food, she said.

“I think it’s a great idea for the senior center to do,” she said.

Background

 Chef Robert Danhi is the author of “Southeast Asian Flavors: Adventures in cooking the foods of Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysian and Singapore.”

The book was nominated for a 2009 James Beard Foundation Book Award.

 Danhi spent a decade cooking in restaurants from Hawaii to New York. He also has served as a chef instructor, executive chef and director of education at the California School of Culinary Arts in Pasadena.

 For more information on Danhi or to sample a few of his recipes, visit

www.chefdanhi.com/