29 November 2009

Cooking Class #2

I seem to have deleted the photos of the last of my cooking classes. I am devastated, but will soldier on. Here's class #2...

As I have said before, each class starts with a chef's taste plate. This one was FANTASTIC!


Polenta with tomato sauce on some greens. Bring it!

After our snack, we started class with making a super quick veggie stock.

We picked up our trays...


Doesn't look like much, but it all turned into something more...

Eventually.

We boiled this up for about half an hour or so, then strained it thoroughly and used the stock to make soup.... We dutifully picked up our fixings for the next round...


And went back to our stations to start souping it up...


Here's the stock simmering with the butternut squash. After a spell, we wazzed it up with the immersion blender and voila! Squash soup!


From there, we made a salmon wrapped in parchment with veg...


The salmon was pretty good...especially considering I really don't like salmon...


It was cooked with red pepper and onion and had a pretty decent flavour. I really prefer salmon to be really dry and grilled. I think it's like when you first start drinking wine. You really like regular old zinfandel, but after a spell, you move on the Riojas. I think once I ease into liking dry overcooked salmon, I will start to like the softer side of salmon. Some day.

For dessert, we made pears poached in a red wine sauce. These were really really strong!


They were incredibly boozey. I brought them home and G and I had them with whipped cream. Really nice.

It was a good class. We learned to stew and steam and all those related things, and I really learned a lot from our teacher Ian...


He really worked to make it fun and informative, and I enjoyed his teaching style very much. For information on Calphalon classes, look here (and no, I don't get paid for saying it, I just loved the cooking course I took!).

1 comment:

Mardi Michels said...

I have done a couple of Calphalon courses and loved them. Have a gift voucher for another so am trying to decide what to do in the new year. Love your photos!

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