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| Gnocchi presentation with Chef Branden |
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| Our veggies |
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| My grilled steaks (despite the poor photo color) |
Today I attended the "Farm to Table" recreational cooking class at
Johnson & Wales University with about 15 other students It was fun, and I learned a lot. Chef Branden was a great instructor. First up was a lesson on food prep safety and knife skills (yay!). Then we returned to our work stations to tackle a course featuring local produce, meat, or seafood. My partner Lynn and I ended up with
grilled skirt steak with roasted asparagus, charred cherry tomatoes. Lynn wanted to make something her 13 year old boys would eat so I let her choose. I would have preferred something that I wouldn't normally cook but oh well. Other teams were working on the following courses:
carrot soup with candied ginger and coconut creme fraiche; marinated mushroom salad; pan seared cod fiddle head ferns with roasted garlic and chili; gnocchi with brussel sprouts, pancetta, and fresh herbs; lavender shortbread and honey gelato sandwiches; and cherry-apricot clafoutis with vanilla ice milk.
Somehow I ended up trimmin' and grillin' the skirt steaks and Lynn got to work on the veggie prep and marinade. I think 4 instructors came over and told us how to trim asparagus. Some were of the bend and snap camp, others were of the chop the ends camp. Back to my meat. Lemme just say, all the instructors (and some of the male students) were pretty impressed with the diamond grill marks on my steaks. When the steaks were done, one of the instructors helped me out with my knife skills since I didn't get a chance to practice while trimming the meat. I learned how to safely chop things really small. We were encouraged to go see what other tables were doing but that was hard for me, I got pretty focused on my own cooking. But when my hands were clean, I walked around and asked questions.
A couple of hours later, our dishes were plated an laid out buffet style in a tasting room. Our class and the Spanish cooking class (which was going on next door) got to taste all our dishes. There was A LOT of food and it was all quite tasty. Can't wait for Cape Cod Cuisine next month.
