So good you should bottle it

One of the big benefits of being able to work at home on occassion is that I get to spend the hour between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. doing something other than sitting in traffic being anxious. This morning I used it to start making chipotle en conserva - basically a chile-garlic-onion marmalade that is delicious as a condiment and also as a base for some meat dishes. We made it at cooking school and I've been jonesing to make some ever since I got home.

I've had the ingredients sitting around for ages so this morning I decided to put it all together.

Chipotle en conserva
(From Mexican Home Cooking School)

• 10-16 dried chipotles (I prefer moritas)
• some bay leaves (from my parents' garden)
• four heads of garlic (mostly from our CSA farm box)
• 1 tbsp dried oregano (also from the farm)
• 1 tbsp dried thyme (also from the farm)
• 1 large cone piloncillo (Mexican sugar)
• 1/2 cup of cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• salt
  
• 2 onions

Add everything but the onion to 6 cups of salted water. Simmer partially for an hour. Take off the heat and let sit overnight (in this case I did it in the morning. let it sit all day, and then finished it in the evening). Slice the onions very fine, add to the pot and then simmer for another half an hour or so. Put into sterlized jars and refrigerate.

According to Dona Elena, it'll keep in the fridge for a year if you always use a clean spoon when dipping in to use it.

It was fun and made the house smell really good. This made about six little bottles plus I had some leftover sauce and onions once I ran out of chipotles. I think I'll see if I can use it to braise some ribs or something in the pressure cooker and use it in tacos or something . . . we shall see, we shall see.

Cooking Class #3 -- I feel like chicken tonight!

My third cooking class (in SEPTEMBER! How slow am I in posting?!) had one of my favorite starters.


YUM! Cheesy toast with basil and a lightly lightly seasoned cauliflower. I was probably about four weeks or so into Weight Watchers on this one, so I made myself eat the veggies (I loathe cauliflower) but the bread was wonderful!

We started class by making a bread pudding... with full fat cream. Which meant little ol' me ate a little ol' bit and threw the rest away... but look at it...


I packaged it up before taking a photo, so there is it with the lid lifted for a photo op!

Here's the starter plate...


A chunk of bread, eggs, cream, nutmeg, booze, butter... it had the works. The recipe was pretty easy to make and Ian told us of a bunch of good alternatives to sweet bread pudding, like savory bread puddings such as breakfast strata's, etc. It was delicious!

We also made a chili shrimp...


This was so easy... we put in shrimp, chili sauce, oil, citrus... and then quickly fried it up into a delicious amount of goodness. am not a huge fan of shrimp, but this was pretty good.

We also made baked chickens...


Here it is all gussied up and ready for the roasting tray. Taking a fancy cooking class has its perks... the chicken was already all clean! There were some errant feathers, but overall, it was pretty easy breezy.

And here are the chickens cooling their heels after a sauna...


(This is probably my favorite photo from all of my classes... after I took mine, a few others took some as well!!!)

And here's my individual bird, all ready for eatin'...


That is a good lookin' bird! I brought it home with whatever else we made that night (the photos don't tell the complete story!) and G and I feasted!

As I mentioned many posts ago, I accidentally deleted cooking class 4 when I go my new camera, so nothing but the memories on that one. I highly highly highly recommend the Calphalon cooking classes. It was so much fun and I really did learn a lot about how to cook using a variety of different techniques.

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!).

Calphalon Cooking Class -- Day 1.

Last night, I finished my four week fundamentals of cooking course at Calphalon. It was an absolutely amazing experience, and I highly recommend it if you live near a culinary centre (which are apparently only exist in Toronto and Chicago). It was an early birthday present, and worth every penny!!!

The class went through a series of cooking techniques, letting us cook several things in each class, trying out new methods (and new Calphalon cookware!). The ingredients were tops, the instructor Ian was fantastic, and the class participants were really ridiculously nice people.

Here's the instructors...Ian and Donna...


(This was at the end of a very hot and sweaty class! Tired, I am sure, but look how happy they were!!! Ian really had a great way of explaining things, and Donna was super great walking around and showing us how to do things correctly!)

When you show up for class, you are given a little "chef's creation" plate of food, and you sit at a work station and zen out. Here's my work station...


The first picture shows the set-up when we arrived. There's an apron, blue towel for clean-ups, and a tea towel to put on our apron strap to use for hot things, etc. The plate of food is that week's creation, which was a marinated eggplant and little salad. I forgot to take a picture, I was so nervous about the class!!! The second picture is the top of my binder and the burner. We had a series of bowls to use for mixing, trash bowls, etc. We each had two burners of our own, and our own pots, pans, and plates.

The way the class was set up really worked! Ian would talk about the thing we were about to prepare, and then we would bring a cafeteria tray up to the front of the room where our ingredients would be given to us to take back to our work stations. At that time, we'd drop off any used cutlery, knives, bowls, etc.

Our first task was fruit salad. We were learning knife skills.


There's our "fixings". Pineapple, melon, papaya, orange, kiwi, apple, honey, mint, and coconut. We started chopping and stuck it all in a bowl. We then served up as much as we wanted, stored the rest, and had our snack while the stir-fry was being set-up.


And there she is. Fruit salad. Ooh. Ahhh. In reality, it was a fun exercise. We had to section clementines!!! ACK!

From there we moved on to our shrimp and chicken stir-fry. It may sound crazy to you, but I have never made shrimp before!!! I was so nervous that I was going to ruin it! Here's our tray for that...


That's allota stuff! There was bok choy, chicken, shrimp, ginger, chili, soy sauce, chicken broth, veggies... and it was back to a chopping exercise. We used the wok, which was good, the Calphalon woks are really nice (but really expensive!). We marinated meat...


And then we chopped veg for what felt like hours...


And voila! Dinner!!!


Terrific!

And here's just a fun shot of Ian in action...


There are an army of pots and pans at the front of the room!

So this was the first class. We get little places at the front of the room where we can bring our dinner and eat while Ian and Donna straighten up the room. There's wine, beer and soft drinks available to order for a small fee (especially considering the very generous pours!), and everyone sat around and ate the fruits of our labours. I even ate some of the shrimp!!!

I was really excited about the next class... more to come...