Learn how to improve your knife skills, develop your cooking techniques, or learn how to make specific dishes or menus, all in your own home. Lessons may be individual or group.
Knife Skills Class
followed by an Asian Dinner prepared collectively by the class.
What do a bridge, a claw, and an axis, have in common? They are each ways to safely grip food while it is being cut.
Chef Rick Beeman will show you how it is you can safely and quickly slice, dice, mince, plank, and pare food the way a restaurant chef does. Not only are the techniques faster, but they are safer.
Once the cutting is done we will enjoy a stir-fried dinner and Thai Spring Rolls as a reward.
“Taking Home-style to Haute Cuisine”
Join me for this “behind the scenes” look at tricks of the trade to create show stopping meals from your favorite family-style recipes. They share in an elegant meal we prepare as a group from family favorite basic recipes.
What is the difference between “Confit Byaldi” as prepared by Chef Thomas Keller of the French Laundry and Per Se and simple ratatouille? The answer–the way it looks. Foods as basic as mac & cheese, meatloaf, or pasta, can attain new levels of elegance if you understand a few fundamental presentation techniques.
If you have a favorite recipe you serve to the family, but wouldn’t consider serving it to friends as part of a formal meal, then this course is for you. The simplest of your dishes, presented elegantly can be served to the your most special guests with pride.
Tamale Making
Tamale making parties are a Latin American tradition, usually associated with Christmas. Because of the labor-intensive nature of making tamales, the more hands involved the better. A tamale making party is one that allows people to make enough food for the group for that evening, with the added benefit of having enough that guests can take some home and freeze them for later.
The beauty of tamales is their flexibility–they don’t have to be stuffed with pork or beef, but can be filled with most anything. I know of a restaurant that make a pumpkin pie tamale for Thanksgiving!
So gather your friends and begin to think up ideas for your next tamale making party!
Creating Vegan Meat Alternatives
The idea of creating foods that taste like and have the mouth-feel of meat goes back centuries. Particularly in Asian cultures when meat was hard to find on a regular basis, people developed meat substitutes that would be treated and flavored like their meat counterparts. Although tofu may be substituted for meat in many dishes, they do not masquerade as meat like some of the other alternatives such as seitan and tempeh. Creating “fake meat” is not difficult, and the flavor possibilities are endless.