Part of my birthday gift to my boyfriend last month was a gift card
to Sur La Table for a cooking class. We both have caught the cooking
bug and this is one of the consequences He actually put in on his wish
list so I was being nice and indulgent girlfriend. I reminded him the
other night about it, seeing that he hasn’t book a class yet. He looked
at their class schedule and he said, “Just checked it at the right time! Frying, Sautéing, Grilling and Roasting is tomorrow!”
He reserved a seat right away.
The class runs for about 2 hours so I thought I’d use time to do
some reading and come up with concepts for a client’s site. I’ve never
tried the wireless at B&N so I checked the rates and was so happy
to see how cheap it was: $2.95 for 2 hours! [Backstory: I remember
paying thrice that in Vancouver for an HOUR of connection. Clearly, ye
Americans are spoiled…hehe.] I already had it in my head that this is
my plan.
About two hours before the class, I turned to D to ask him if he would like me to be there in the class with him.1 He said, unsure, “Sure, if you want to.” “But do you want me to?”
I booked for the class less than 2 hours before it starts. I blame cooking class envy.
We went there early and our aprons were already prepared over the
chairs. The tables with the cutting board, scraper, and knive were
already in place. Chef Robert and his assistant were there as well. We
put on our name tags and were told the card that comes beside it is a
15% discount at the store that night (sweet!). The class
started out with preparing the ingredients: scallops, prawns, chicken,
and pork. It wasn’t a recipe class, but a technique class, so there
were no recipes to follow. I took mental notes of the ingredients so I
can duplicate them later—they were so good.
Order of the oh-so-yum dishes:
Seared Scallops: Fresh scallops drenched in flour mixed with spices. List of spices: paprika, pepper, salt, garlic salt, creole seasoning.
Sautéed Prawns: Fresh, de-shelled, de-veined
prawns sautéed in a bed of onions, garlic tomatoes and seasoned with
salt, ground pepper, pepper flakes. Finished with cream.
Seared Stuffed Pork Loin: Pork loin ‘hole’ was
bored with a knife sharpener and the stuffing was placed inside using a
piping bag. Stuffing mixture: walnuts, celery, ricotta cheese, salt,
pepper, orange marmalade.
Stuffed Chicken Breasts: Chicken breast
‘pocket’ was cut using a paring knife. Stuffing mixture: sausage,
ricotta cheese, dates, jalapeño, salt, pepper.
I’m sure I missed a few ingredients, but the basics are there. I’ll
try to make these in the following week and I’ll post pictures.
Class notes
1. Do NOT sear on non-stick pans.
2. Non-stick pans are only used for crepes, eggs, and pancakes.
3. When you bite on rubbery shrimps, they’re overcooked.
4. To make the perfect grill crossmarks on the meat, use the 11-2 (clock) rule.
5. Pork is a salty meat. Honestly, I never knew this.
6. You need a ‘binder’ for the stuffing. For this class, ricotta cheese was used.
7. I need to hunt down Zatarain’s Creolo Seasoning
Oh, and the knives that we used were awesome, which the chef said
were better than our WÜSTHOF, but I’ll stick with ours for now. Hehe.
We ended the night shopping for more kitchen stuff, including a two-prong digital thermometer. I blame watching Alton Brown in Good Eats for that item.
1 This is female wording tactic for you males out there.
It means: “I want to be there but I want to know that you want me to be
there, too. HAHA
