NW Culinary Academy - Serious Foodies Course follow-up [SaabKen[

[ROLAND's NOTE: Thanks Ken.  Would have loved to have been there.  But you don't need me to take pictures, just use your camera and post them here with Flickr.  Flickr is free and allows you to post tons of pictures for free (disclosure: I know and like the Flickr folks but I am not an investor; just a happy paid up user with 4000 photos there). And you can post pictures from Flickr to VanEats very easily.]

The last two weeks of classes only got better and better.

Class #2 highlights included making our own crabcakes with salsa - starting with shelling out meat from cooked dungeness crabs to forming and panfrying; crepes stuffed with sautéed fruits and a watercress salad.

Class #3 this past Monday was very busy. A starter of oven roasted beets and fennel salad kicked off the evening nicely paired with a glass of a Hardys white. Then we kicked into 2nd gear learning how to make our own baguette and the skills behind the each stage of mix/knead/set/form dough. For someone who almost never bakes, it was neat for me to see my own loaf of golden baguette come out of the hot oven, with knife scores on top of the loaf to boot. Adding to that was learning to make gnocchi which turned out to be much easier than I imagined. With all this chef-ing going on we also had a fantastically deep aromatic lamb provencal stew simmering in the background, which when done was poured on top of the freshly made gnocchis. Chef Tony came around and served us another round of a Hardys red. Just when we could hardly eat another bite (but not enough wine to keep up), the full course meal would not be complete with baked fruit en papillotte (in parchment paper bag). What a sight when everyone walked out of the school into the pleasant warm evening each "armed" with a fresh warm baguette in hand. This is where Roland should have been with his camera !

Bon appetit,
Ken

Contributed by SaabKen