Man Am I STUFFED!!!

Whew!  Tonite… was a good nite in the kitchen!  :)  We're wrapping up our worldwide excursion into cereal grains.  Tonite was Cereal Grains of the Americas, which included Central and South America (read: Mexico, the Caribbean).

We each made our own tortillas (man, just HOW could I screw up such a simple task!).  I managed to get only about four corn tortillas made, and I struggled with the dough for my flour tortillas until I just finally ran out of patience.  Garrrr!!!

Anyway, it didn't matter 'cause by the time we were all served, I ended up eating MUCH more than I should have!  Below is a delicious quinoa salad made by Group 3:

A colorful, flavorful quinoa salad

My team made this freakin' delicious item called Dunkanoo (sounds like something you'd get at the Dunkin Donuts!).  This is basically grated fresh corn mixed with happy good things like brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, coconut milk, golden raisins and cornmeal.  We made a mash of that and stuffed banana leaves with it, then popped these li'l packages in the steamer…

Unwrap the banana leaf to find the delicious goodness inside...

They needed to cool first so the mixture would congeal together all nice-like.  And when they did…  whoa.  Tender, sweet/savory goodness.  Sigh… I love this class!

We've made some more straightforward things, too, while exploring cereal grains, such as your basic risotto and a pretty dang tasty stuffed bell pepper called, believe it or not, Etli Biber Dolmasi…

Your basic, average, everyday risotto...

Fancy name for stuffed peppers!

Tomorrow we start a three-day run of Noodles and Dough, starting with Southeast Asia (pad thai, potstickers), then continuing on to Europe and North Africa (pierogies!), and ending up back in the Americas (TAMALES!).

Did I mention that I love this class?

Peace out.  Namaste.

The Best Damn Indian Lamb Stew – EVER!!!

That’s right, foodies!  Tonite was the first nite of our Cuisine Across Cultures class at LCB, and we got off to… an auspicious start!

This class is ingredient-oriented, rather than culture-oriented.  What this means is that, each night we focus on a particular ingredient and visit how different cultures will use that ingredient in their cuisine.  Tonight was easy: rice.  We did a Spanish Paella, a Chinese Yangzhou Chau Fan, and an Indian Gosht Pulao.

Cheryl stir-fries while Ron preps paella

We broke into groups of about four and covered each recipe.  Our team made the Chinese stir-fry, which was really pretty easy.  We made a delicious marinade of soy sauce, rice wine, oyster sauce, sesame oil, salt and sugar.  I broke down some pork into small bite-sized chunks and we marinated that for about half an hour.  We then roasted those on a pan in the oven to save time stir-frying it later.  We got the wok goin’, then did the ginger, garlic, soy sauce, shrimp, then the pork, rice and scallions on top.

Our super-delicious pork & shrimp stir-fry

Another group did the paella, which definitely scored high points with both our chef instructors and the rest of the class.  The star of the night, though, was definitely the Gosht Pulao, which is a braised lamb stew.

Yes, it really is the best dang Indian lamb stew EVER!!!

It may not look like much, but this stuff was freakin’ DELICIOUS!  The lamb was diced and marinated in such spices as cumin, cayenne and turmeric.  The group then got some ghee heated in a large, heavy-bottomed sauté pan and toasted a whole cinnamon stick, some cardamom pods and cloves.  They then added in sliced onions, garlic and ginger.  I walked past and Mark grabbed my shoulder, beckoning me over.  I just stuck my face over the pan and breathed deeply…  sigh!

Next they added in some coriander, nutmeg and black pepper, topping it all off with some diced tomato and a few bay leaves.  In went a quart of water and the marinated lamb, and they covered and simmered that mixture for a good hour until the lamb was nice and tender and the flavors were well infused.

They finally topped it off with a big ol’ pile of basmati rice and let that simmer just enough for the rice to cook through.  They served it… and the whole class just about fell over!  We were beside ourselves.  We’d all had the other items already and were feeling pretty full.  But it seems we saved the best for last and we cleaned that whole pan of stew in ten minutes flat.

This is going to be an awesome class.  Tomorrow night we’re making sushi!  Later on we’ll make arepas, pad thai, and pierogies!  Tamales, fried cassava chips, tapioca cake, a lamb tagine, sake no miso, falafel, hummus, duck confit, mole, jerk…!  And we’re making some crazy stuff I never heard of like Gaeng Ped Hoi Mang Phu, Smodampete Nypoteter, Aloo Partha, and Bang Bang Ji Si…  ?!?!

I’m tellin’ ya, this class alone is worth the price of admission…  peace out, and Namaste.

Hors d’Oeuvres – Catering & Buffets, Week 1

WE ARE FINALLY OUT OF THE CLASSROOM!


Don’t get me wrong: I did enjoy both the ‘Food, History & Culture’ and ‘Nutrition’ classes. Dice and Ashlee were both fun instructors, and I’d definitely take courses taught by them again. The material was interesting enough, but what ticked me off is how some of the students were really disrespectful of them. Yeah yeah, I know, “we’re here to cook!” Whatever. We’re here to learn. But while I enjoyed these classes, I’m glad we’re finally back in the kitchen. ☺


So here we are, in Chef Bruno’s Catering and Buffets class. I could tell within the first few days I’m going to love this class. We do work as teams, not individuals. I don’t have to stress about completing all elements of a single dish by myself. Instead, we work out as a team who’ll do which elements, and then we get to it, pulling everything together in the end for the final presentation.


The class is broken up into units, or sections, with each one building on an element or type of catering or buffet management until the final week, where we pull all these pieces together into The Grand Buffet. So this week we started out easy: hors d’oeuvres.





So here’s Chef Bruno demo’ing the Duck Breast Canapé. OMG, this was freakin’ delicious! The idea is to prep and sear a duck breast (drrooooooollllll!!!!!), then allow it to cool. Then we took a Pullman loaf and cut uniform squares, toasting them lightly. We supréme’d mandarin oranges, then sliced those wedges in half so we had a better-fitting piece of orange for the canapé. Finally we took some pistachios, soaked them for a while to loosen the skins, then shelled them. We chopped ‘em up nice and fine, then began the assembly.





The trick with hors d’oeuvres is symmetry and consistency: each piece should feel balanced not only visually, but in taste as well. For our team’s canapés, we made a delicious orange-rosemary butter to spread on our toasted croutons. We then placed an orange slice in one corner, some chopped pistachios in another, then a thin folded slice of seared duck breast in the middle. The result: freakin’ delicious.





Each week will get harder, with more items on the menu of greater complexity, requiring more prep and much better time management. The fun of it is the teamwork required. No one person will ever be responsible for one thing entirely, but we’ll each divvy up tasks and pull it all together for the final show. Once I have the pics from our final presentation (I forgot my camera that nite!), I’ll post the menu and the corresponding items.