Taste is something you’re born with, and Geila Bernstein knows that first hand. She has the uncanny ability to detect any component in a dish and recreate it, ingredient by ingredient. As a child, she loved to dabble in the kitchen, but had her cooking privileges revoked when she set it ablaze. “My parents were asleep and my brother wanted Matzo Brei,” she explains. All was forgiven a few years later when she was able to reproduce a dish her family had enjoyed at a restaurant. The discovery of her golden palate later led to some interesting jobs, such as caviar taster for the now defunct Caviarteria. She was hired after she was able to identify the origin of 10 out of 10 types of caviar in a blind taste test. Though she doesn’t eat the stuff anymore, she can tell the difference between paddlefish roe and real Osetra. “It’s a bizarre gift,” she says. “Some people have a nose. I have a taste palate.” Bernstein was also the gourmet food buyer for Bloomingdale’s and is a graduate of two culinary schools, the Cordon Bleu in Paris and Peter Kump, now known as the New York Culinary Institute. Look for her recipes on BFruitfull.com, as well as her column on substitutions called “From Traif to Safe.”