Cooking Classes

As I continue to toy with the idea of trying to find a food related job, I have been trying to expand my food world knowledge by reading, dining out and taking classes. I haven’t taken too many classes yet but there was the Masters in French cooking class over the summer and most recently, my class on how to roast suckling pig.

Last Friday I went to the Inn on West 23rd to take a 4 hour course on Roasting suckling pig and cooking some of the traditional suckling pig meal accompaniments. The class was fun but I wish I would have been able to be a bit more hands on with the pig. Time constraints mean that the instructor pretty much dealt with the pig (which seems fairly easy) while the students prepared the sides. This was, however, the first time that I’ve been able to experience the joy of suckling pig in its whole form, and yes, the head was still attached (it’s a good think too.) I managed to try suckling pig trotter, cheek, rib, loin, ear, tongue and brain. My favorite part was actually the tongue, it was incredibly tender, piggy and flavorful and once it’s cut out of the mouth, you kind of forget that you’re eating a tongue!

Anyway, I’m taking a class next Saturday taught by the Ideas in Food tandem on “steak and eggs” in which we will investigate and prepare steak and eggs in various forms. If it’s anything like what their pig and apple class looked like I’m in for a treat. (Click on link for something bizarrely awesome.)


In relation to yesterday’s post, here is a meal composed of ingredients solely from the farmers market:


It’s Mako on top of cranberry beans with bacon and sage in a spicy tomato broth. Simple and delicious and I have enough left over for lunch tomorrow.


On a final note…The 2008 Michelin guide to New York was released. You can see the starred restaurants here. The starrings seem to be completely arbitrary (almost as if the Michelin people skipped half of the restaurants in New York) and are not to be trusted. I have no idea how accurate Michelin is in Europe but their New York guide is of no use to me at all.

Cooking Class Part Two

I’ve now finished three days of French cooking class and have two more remaining. I’m really enjoying the class so far, but I really don’t like how it ends so early in the day. After we spend some time learning about our dishes and cooking, we then sit down at about 5:30ish and sample our work. Today for dinner I had bites of Blanquette de Veau (veal stew), coq au vin, duck breast with figs in port wine, lapin a moutarde (rabbit in mustard sauce), roast pork loin with prunes and golden raisins, steak au poivre, and leg of lamb with garlic sauce. After all that food and a couple of glasses of wine to wash it all down I become completely useless for the rest of the day.

I still feel like I’ve learned a lot from the class simply observing, listening, tasting and working with an instructor who knows more about food than I do. In general I rarely find myself cooking with someone who is more knowledgeable about cooking and eating than myself, so I really relish this kind of experience. I’m also happy that I’ve been able to avoid cooking some of the things I tends to do (pretty well) at home like: steak a poivre, sole meuniere, trout amandine and duck breast.

Today I got to work on the blanquette de veau, a traditional cassoulet and on some sweetbreads to be served with a sauternes sauce. Out of all the things we tasted I probably would have picked the cassoulet, a traditional dish that I read about all the time but have never made, the sweetbreads in sauternes (two things I really, really like in one dish) and probably the rabbit. Unfortunately due to the time constraints of the class we won’t be finishing the sweetbreads or the cassoulet until tomorrow. We have most of the cassoulet done but there wasn’t enough time in the class to bake in the bread crumbs, and the sweetbreads needed to be soaked, blanched and then released from their membranes and drained again.

I’m excited to see how the sweetbreads turn out, and if in the end I am good at cooking sweetbreads, all who know me will be eating different incarnations of delicious thymus gland in the coming months!