Travel Break: Great Classes #2 -- Cooking with Sour

Before Christmas I took a cooking class with chef Geoff Russell (HERE). It was such fun I signed up for one of his "Five Flavors" classes, "Sour." (The others: Bitter, Sweet, Salty, Unami.)

Geoff met us with a frothy whiskey sour, which got everyone well loosened up!

Then he began cooking, answering questions as he explained step by step the dishes he was preparing. He started out with ceviche, which uses the acid of lime juice to "cook" the fish.

Geoff used cod and it was delicious. Some of the things I learned from this were to always buy very good fish, then freeze it for three days to kill any parasites that may be within. (You can't kill bacteria with freezing, so get good fish!) Firm fish like cod or seafood like scallops are best.

Also, once you make it, you have a limited "resting time" at which point you should eat it. After a half hour, you may as well toss it because the fish will be too tough to be really enjoyed.

Pickling uses sour too, namely, vinegar. Geoff prepared pickled red onions which he sliced thinly and covered with ___________. It's a fast pickling and within a half hour or so, the onions were just divine!

He used these onions on his super duper grilled cheese sandwich. Let me say I am quite the grilled cheese aficianado and this was hands-down the best grilled cheese I ever had. It also probably had the most calories of any grilled cheese ever because his secret to goodness is not to slather one side of the bread with butter but to melt butter in your pan and SLOWLY grill one side of the bread. Then take it out, assemble the sandwich with grated cheese for faster melting on TOP of the toasty bread (butter side), add some of the pickled onions, add more cheese, top it and then grill both sides of the ungrilled bread in fresh melted butter.

 It is so crispy and crunch and filled with cheesy goodness that I could have died happy right there. And if I ate too many of these, I would. (Do not cook this within a week of having blood tests for a physical or your cholesterol numbers might go off the roof!)

One of the things I love about these classes is that we aren't the ones doing the cooking. We sit very close as he explains every step so we can see and take notes. We aren't distracted by wondering if we are stirring our own sauce too much or too little. So, watching, noting and asking questions, we really are able to learn and focus. It's much easier to bring that home and cook his dishes because we've seen every step.

Source: Ex Culina

He then showed us how to make a shrub -- a mixture of grapefruit peel, sugar and vinegar that makes a bit of a syrup.

After this mixture has sat for a few days, add back in the juice you extracted from the grapefruit and strain it. A shot of that over ice with club soda was fabulous. (Vodka would be good, too!).

Also on our menu was Rock Cornish game hen with a blackberry sauce. The sauce also used a vinegar, along with sugar for a wonderful sweet-sour combo. Geoff takes the backbone out of the chicken and lays it flat to cook, which helps it cook a bit faster. These went about a half hour.

This was served with Brussels sprouts, tossed with shallots and herbs, then oven-roasted topped with balsamic vinegar.

We also had a fun vinegar tasting. We dipped swabs into several different vinegars and placed it on our tongue. It was interesting to note the different qualities of each -- if they felt fruity or salty or too tart.

Then it was time to sit down and enjoy our meal. We'd already been munching on grilled cheese and ceviche and enjoying beverages.

The chicken was so good with the blackberry sauce. I'll be making that sauce again soon for any number of things.

Served up with a glass of wine, our happy band of students were all happy campers!

This has been my second Chef Geoff cooking class and so far I love them all! So, I say...

Source: Ex Culina

...Cheers!

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Cooking Class with Geoff Russell

Before we do a couple of year end posts and head back to England on the Marmelade Gypsy, I wanted to write about one other great thing I did to wrap up 2018. It was to attend a holiday cooking class with Chef Geoff Russell.



Geoff is an area chef who had rich culinary experience . He has started offering small cooking demos and tastings in a home setting here in Lansing, Michigan. I loved how it worked -- we didn't do the hands-on. Instead, we sat at the counter while Geoff cooked and explained his recipes and techniques as we peppered him with questions. The class included the recipes for all the dishes prepared, which I covered with notes!

We were greeted first with a Wassail cocktail, perfect for the season. Then we joined Geoff in the kitchen as he prepared Rillettes, a savory appetizer of braised dark meat and cornichons on crostini.

He then went on to prepare a delicious mincemeat Bakewell tart, a riff on the original tart recipe with homemade mincemeat. (True confession -- I had never tried mincemeat before; I thought it sounded terrible. I cannot wait to make this one myself! All that great fruit was delicious!)

It was fun watching him make the frangipani and assemble the tart. And oh, so good when done!

He showed us how to do turkey breast sous vide, a rolled breast cooked at a constant internal temperature for rather awhile in a special machine. I don't know that I'll do this with the machine but learning the rolled technique was good.  And when it was done, it sliced like a dream.

He also showed us how to cut a chicken without destroying it.

(I asked how many chickens were mutilated in his learning attempts and he said "many." I can see why!)

The new potato dish was fascinating. They are boiled with an enormous amount of salt in the pan and water barely covering. When done, the pan looked like this... (it cleans easily, it's just salt.)

...and the potatoes like this.

And after he added some oil and spices and served with the rest of our meal later, they were delicious and surprisingly, not too salty. (Potatoes always require more salt than you think!)

But my favorite dish was the massaged kale salad. I have never been a fan of kale. That changed big time!

This salad requires way more kale than you think it does! After it's washed and dried, it's finely minced (rather like the parsley in tabouli) and then you get in with both hands and massage the heck out of it with olive oil and salt to tenderize it. (Maybe that's the problem. I never had tender kale.)

Then he added wonderful ingredients -- blue cheese, toasted walnuts and baked grapes which were succulent and sweet. The it was tossed with a mustard/shallot vinaigrette.

It was the best thing ever (and I've made it twice since.) And then, the big reveal!

Isn't that a gorgeous platter? And I can tell you, that glorious feast tasted as good as it looked!

The table was beautifully set and the food was just delicious. The carrots sweet, the turkey tender and the potatoes perfectly seasoned.

The dessert was a sweet wrap up.

And our little group of happy learners were delighted!

I learned a lot at this class, including many cooking tips and loads of info on food science, preparation and just how things "work" together.  I hope to take more of Geoff's winter series, which includes five sessions on the tastes -- sweet, sour, bitter, tart and unami. If you are in the area, check them out here. The classes were about three hours altogether with dining. The winter ones include tastings as well, detailed in the website descriptions. You can check it out HERE.

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