Cooking course - Round 1
Tonight Graeme and I headed out to the U-District (the area near the U-Dub University of Washington for those in the know) to experience our first of six cooking courses.
The instructor was a quite eccentric chef, but on a whole I found the evening to be enjoyable and empowering. Tonight's theme was chicken.. and boy, did she prepare chicken. She roasted, broiled, stir-fryed and stewed chicken, preparing 4 dishes for us to try. I think the most empowering thing I got out of it was that roasting a chicken doesn't look so hard.
It's obvious that the cooking courses are geared to try to make the store money. Our trusty instructor extolled the virtues of the merchandise in her store, of the garlic peeler that you roll garlic cloves in to painlessly peel them, tongs (everyone needs a good pair of tongs), special spatulas, a device that helps you scrap the cuttings from the cutting board and neatly deposit them into your pan. And, conveniently for us, all of the "featured" items of the class were grouped near the classroom. And on course nights, we are given a generous 20% discount.
Surprising advice: Don't store your onions or garlic in the refrigerator. They can be stored in a basket (not a bowl) so that they can breathe.
Merchandising purchases:
-Tongs
-Roasting Rack
-Instant-Read Thermometer
-Medium Microplane Grater
Total Cost: $40
Homework for the week:
-Cook something [my grand plans are to roast a chicken on Sunday :) ]
-Clean out the pantry and the cold pantry (aka the refrigerator)
I pride myself in my ability to hold off buying the garlic peeler.. though now I'm wondering why I thought the rack was a good idea. It does look nice though.. and she mentionned that it makes the chicken like a rotisserie and avoids cooking the bottom one way and the top another... and it's an excuse to roast a chicken! Hmm..
The instructor was a quite eccentric chef, but on a whole I found the evening to be enjoyable and empowering. Tonight's theme was chicken.. and boy, did she prepare chicken. She roasted, broiled, stir-fryed and stewed chicken, preparing 4 dishes for us to try. I think the most empowering thing I got out of it was that roasting a chicken doesn't look so hard.
It's obvious that the cooking courses are geared to try to make the store money. Our trusty instructor extolled the virtues of the merchandise in her store, of the garlic peeler that you roll garlic cloves in to painlessly peel them, tongs (everyone needs a good pair of tongs), special spatulas, a device that helps you scrap the cuttings from the cutting board and neatly deposit them into your pan. And, conveniently for us, all of the "featured" items of the class were grouped near the classroom. And on course nights, we are given a generous 20% discount.
Surprising advice: Don't store your onions or garlic in the refrigerator. They can be stored in a basket (not a bowl) so that they can breathe.
Merchandising purchases:
-Tongs
-Roasting Rack
-Instant-Read Thermometer
-Medium Microplane Grater
Total Cost: $40
Homework for the week:
-Cook something [my grand plans are to roast a chicken on Sunday :) ]
-Clean out the pantry and the cold pantry (aka the refrigerator)
I pride myself in my ability to hold off buying the garlic peeler.. though now I'm wondering why I thought the rack was a good idea. It does look nice though.. and she mentionned that it makes the chicken like a rotisserie and avoids cooking the bottom one way and the top another... and it's an excuse to roast a chicken! Hmm..