New Experiences: Cooking Classes

I'll write more on each of these classes individually and include pictures, but I wanted to write something comparing the two, and more generally about classes.

When I was younger I thought cooking classes would be the best thing ever. I took a candy-making class at the end of high school and loved it. But the idea fell by the wayside during college, and afterward I realized that teaching myself to cook was going pretty well (and it's continued to go well). Also, cooking classes are massively expensive.

Then came Groupon. And Living Social. And BuyWithMe. And a host of other discounts on almost anything you can imagine...including cooking classes. So I decided to try a couple out.

The first one I bought was for Company's Coming, which is taught by Jinny and Ed Fleischman out of their home in DC. It was a good deal - about half off one of their First Friday classes, and I could pick what I wanted to take. I chose a tapas class in March. Unfortunately, that month the first Friday class was actually taking place on the second Friday, which was during Lent (Ash Wednesday had been that week), which meant I couldn't eat meat that day, and the class was mostly meat. So I postponed it, and ended up taking an Italian class in June. I was a little cranky about the scheduling issues, but felt fine by the time I arrived at their beautiful Cleveland Park house and was handed a delicious cocktail and told to go nuts with the appetizers - a tuna dip and a goat cheese dip with crackers. The class was great. There were about ten of us, all stationed with our cutting boards and chef's knives around a long kitchen island. We all worked together, each taking over tasks such as chopping or mixing marinades, then dumping the ingredients into a pot, or onto the pastry to go in the oven. Someone got to man the grill when it was time to make the sausages. Then we all ate together standing at the counter. It was a fun atmosphere, and I got some great tips (which I'll share in the full entry on the class).

The second class I got was from Open Kitchen, which is a bistro and cooking school in Fall's Church (conveniently near my office). It's a much larger operation, with its own restaurant facility and more of a staff. Unfortunately, I had scheduling problems here too. Soon after I bought the voucher they were offering an Indian street food class, which looked amazing to me. I emailed to ask how to sign up, and waited. And waited. The date of the class passed, and a week later I got an apologetic email suggesting I sign up for another. So I signed up for an English tea class, which also looked pretty great. There was no way I could take three hours off from work in the morning, and the evening class ended up canceled due to lack of interest. Ok, I could roll with this. The next one was Peruvian food. Unfortunately, I had just made Peruvian food myself (I'd rather have done the class first), but I had two vouchers to use and they only offer one international class a month, so I decided to go for it.

Things didn't go very smoothly when I got there, either. I wasn't actually on the list, due to an email miscommunication with the manager. But that was ok, a couple of people didn't show up. Then she asked if I wanted to pay the rest of the balance now or wait until the end of the class. Um, rest of the balance? Now, I guess. Guys, I had to pay another $60! Admittedly, it was my bad to not look up how much the actual class cost before buying the vouchers. But she also mentioned (after seeing the look on my face) that I wasn't the only one with the misperception that I was buying a voucher for the class. Given that, I wish they had done a different format for the Capitol Deal: something like $15 for $30 toward the bistro, or $75 for a cooking class (what I ended up paying), the way companies occasionally do on Living Social or Groupon. Also, now I'm not sure what I'll do with my other voucher. Maybe lunch at the bistro?

Since there was nothing I could do short of saying screw it and leaving, I tried to calm down and make the most of the [very expensive] cooking class. I was presented with a glass of house wine and some bread with olive oil to take the edge off my hunger, and introduced myself to the group. This class was a little bigger - there were 12 of us - and set up in three groups, each with its own station including portable burners. Each group would make its own pot of each dish, with the chefs coming around to check on us and give us pointers. My group was fantastic - Amy was a lot of fun, and her boyfriend and Joe immediately bonded over their love of aquariums. We worked well together, and laughed a lot. With smaller groups, each person got to have a larger part in making the meal, which was kind of fun. And when it was time to eat, they brought chairs around so we could sit at our stations. Since we were running late, the chef just made dessert for us while we were eating so we could get out of there, but it was still 10:30 by the time it was over. The original 9:30 end time was already kind of pushing it for me, and I faded fast. I was so exhausted I couldn't each much at all! The other unfortunate thing was that although dessert was incredible (more than I expected), I just plain didn't like one of the dishes and the other two didn't thrill me. But to end on a positive note, the staff was very solicitous and seemed very concerned that we were having a good time. When I slipped out, the manager followed me to say good night personally.

To compare the two, I thought Open Kitchen did a better job taking care of the individual students (we had more to do and more interaction with the chefs), but Company's Coming was a better overall experience for me, and better organized. As far as cooking classes in general go, I'm not sure they're for me. On the plus side, you get to meet new people and try something new, and you don't have to do any cleanup. On the other hand, I think I'd rather spend the money on a nice dinner that someone else makes for me, or just cook for myself and have more control over the ingredients and what I make. What we made last night wasn't much better than something I could have made myself, although I did pick up a few tips at Company's Coming and a couple last night. I still might consider another class from a truly foreign cuisine - one that my kitchen isn't really set up for. Indian might be a good idea, since I haven't really built my spice collection around it.

Has anyone done a cooking class? Would you? Tell me about your experience in the comments!

Sweden

From my recipe searches, Swedish cuisine appears to be centered on meat, cookies, and sweet breads, with some potatoes thrown in for good measure. Wikipedia tells me that traditional Swedish cuisine includes local ingredients such as berries as well. I guess the latitude is a good reason for the lack of vegetables other than potatoes. There are also fish dishes such as pickled herring, but I'm definitely not adventurous enough to touch that yet. I am REALLY not adventurous enough to try Lutfisk, fish cured in lye. As one of my coworkers told me, friends don't let friends eat Lutfisk.

In case you needed proof that there's no particular order to these countries, I picked Sweden this past weekend because I read the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last weekend and the bacon pancake sounded good. Unfortunately, I got to the bacon pancake after I'd left my parents' house outside Philadelphia - and the Ikea I drive past to get back to DC. Consequently, I was worried about finding lingonberry anything, especially after the red currant jam issues. And I definitely couldn't make Swedish food without lingonberry! So my plan was to try World Market first, then Harris Teeter and Whole Foods, and settle for the boysenberry I used for Austria if I couldn't find it. Luckily, World Market came through!

While I was traipsing all over NoVA, I decided to check out Penzey's Spices in Falls Church to pick up white pepper. Great decision! They had almost everything I could have wanted (no vanilla beans that I saw, but they did have vanilla sugar), and I'll definitely be heading back there. Everything was cheaper than the supermarket, there was way more variety, I could usually get smaller quantities, and I'm pretty sure the quality is higher. As a bonus, they have descriptions of many of the more exotic spices or varieties posted so you know what you're buying.

My parents have been making Swedish meatballs since I was little, but theirs are just basic meatballs in a simple beef gravy. I wanted to see what the real thing was like. The recipe I used had all this stuff like roll the meat carefully into balls, dip in flour, freeze so that they stay together better. I didn't want to deal with all of that, so I made little patties using spoons. They're not the most baller meatballs I've ever made, but they were also fast, and I fried them in so much butter that they were in no danger of sticking to the pan and coming apart. I also knew I wanted to make that bacon pancake, but the recipes I found were for a large souffle like the Salzburger Nockerl, and souffles do not make good leftovers. So I made a third of the recipe and baked it in two personal-sized ramekins until they were golden brown and delicious. It worked well, although the actual pancakes were a little eggy for my taste, and I didn't think the bacon flavor was as integrated as I wanted it to be. I was at a loss for a vegetable recipe - I'm trying to eat a little healthier, and potatoes do not count as vegetables. Finally I found a creamed mushroom recipe from Jamie Oliver Does Sweden. I don't know how authentic it was, but it worked. It was supposed to be made with chanterelles, which are allegedly common in Sweden, but I had shiitakes. The meatballs and mushrooms were really tasty, if incredibly fattening from all the sweet, sweet butter.

The first recipe I found that I decided I wanted to make was glogg, a mulled wine. This recipe was unique because it also included white rum and bourbon, and was supposed to be SET ON FIRE. Unfortunately, my landlords are not fans of temperature moderation, so between the blasting heat and slaving over the stove, oven, and skillet, I was just not in the mood to mull anything, much less set it on fire.

Local Butcher

I knew that for my Ethiopian feast I wanted to make kitfo (raw ground beef in butter and other seasonings). But even though I've seen my grandmother munch on raw ground beef out of the package, I wasn't that brave. So I turned to Steve, my local butcher. He owns Let's Meat on the Avenue in Del Ray, Alexandria. I sent him an email explaining what I wanted to do and asking whether he knew of any ways to make that safer, and he said that if I met him when he opened, he'd grind the beef for me in a freshly sanitized grinder, and that should be just fine. I didn't get sick, so I guess he was right! While I was there, I also saw signs that if you want something he doesn't have, he'll order it and have it within a couple of days. It's not cheap, but I'll definitely be going back! I also saw signs for wild boar and KANGAROO. No lie.

Steve posing next to my pile of freshly ground beef.