Cooking 101

somerville kitchen's wedding gift to a newly wed young couple today was a 3-hour Cooking 101 course.

The couple arrived enthusiastic about cooking and willing to learn. They rolled their sleeves, picked up the course's notes, put their intimidation about cooking aside and the fun begun.

Basics of meat and chicken, chopping vegetables, spicing, baking and frying. They also learned about salad dressings and home made pasta sauce.

They made some burgers and experienced different ways of making eggs, having their own omelettes and scrambled eggs with burgers for breakfast.

Lunch followed breakfast an hour later with an on-site chicken vegetable stir fry that they made (from marinating the meat, to the three basic steps in stir fry - base flavours, meats and vegetables - to making rice).

Later that night, I received a picture of their dinner.

This included a meat loaf and mashed potato that they put together during the class and took home (yes, one can produce all of this in three hours).

What was emphasized most during the class was not the techniques of cooking but eliminating the intimidation of cooking. Let's get comfortable with mixing things together, with getting our hands dirty, having fun in the kitchen and not be afraid of spices as they walked away with samplers of each of the six Rick's Rubs. 

And let's not forget dessert. 

Those are not the easiest to make, but with a bit of yogurt, blueberries, whipped cream and some creativity, fun desserts can be made to impress the most pretentious guests.

Wait, there was also cake making. 

From a cake mix, a cake was baked, creamed and beautified with sprinkles and carried home by the student bakers for a fun after dinner dessert.

All had fun and the newly wed walked out with not only their own made dinner and dessert but with spices, bay leaves, recipes and cookbooks.

Congratulations again CaD and here's to a long fun home cooking life together.





Click here for the three available cooking classes so far at somerville kitchen.  Contact somervillekitchenwindow@gmail.com to arrange any cooking classes and workshops for your upcoming occasion.