MANDEVILLE, La – If you go to a house in Mandeville, Louisiana and ask, what’s cooking, you get the answer from a chef.
“We have celery, bell pepper and onions, sauteed with butter in a pan,” says Ella Petitto who’s in that Mandeville kitchen cooking.
WGNO News with a Twist features guy Wild Bill Wood says to Ella, “smells like a recipe from the heart.”
Ella says, “I like to bake a lot so I just do what makes me happy.”
Ella Petitto’s cooking makes her one of Wild Bill’s Amazing Kids brought to you every week by your friends at The Keating Law Firm.
Ella’s culinary chops are getting her national attention.
It all starts right here in her home. That’s where the Mandeville, Louisiana kitchen is located.
That’s where Ella Petitto slices and dices more like a surgeon than the little girl who started cooking when she was just five.
Now, Ella Petitto is fifteen.
And she’s in love.
She’s in love with the flavors of Louisiana. Those flavors happen to be at the heart of the culinary concept she incorporated into her audition for the Food Network TV cooking competition show, Chopped Junior.
Wild Bill asks Ella Petitto, “why did you turn to your Louisiana cookbook when you had the chance to be on national TV?”
Ella says, “I believe some people underestimate how good Louisiana food is because they’ve either never been here just don’t know how good it is,”
Ella was, and still is, right.
Ella made it to the final four, beating out 8,000 other kids who tried out for the show.
And only Ella Petitto would be Chopped Junior Champ in the fall of 2016.
In case you’re curious, Ella Petitto cooked squab. That’s pigeon.
That’s what the judges took a bite of and named her a culinary star.