Cooking Class: The Rundown

Well, Daddy Chaos and I completed our first official cooking class.  It was a fun evening despite the fact that it wasn’t really a cooking class.  The chefs basically handed us a packet of recipes we would be preparing, gave us our ingredients and tools, and then circulated the room offering advice while we prepared our meal.  It was a little disappointing because it we were totally on our own and yet had to completely rely on the instructors for ingredients and equipment.  Their disorganization turned into our disorganization which made for a rushed, more stressful experience. 

What we didn’t care for: The ingredients were all pre-measured into small cups, cooking show style, which was fine except occasionally we would be missing something-like salt for our boiling water or oil for our dressing.  We then had to rush to find a chef we could interrupt to fetch us a tsp of salt.  Also, the recipes were for much larger servings than the four of us would eat so they automatically scaled the recipes down. Except they scaled some parts and not others, leading to confusion over ingredient amounts, with no access to measuring cups.  Our equipment was handed to us moments before we needed to use it so there were times when we were grasping for a plate or spoon that wasn’t there.  In addition, we had never made some of the items on the menu before so we didn’t exactly know what we were doing.  I would have like to have received instruction on perfectly cooking a tenderloin and ahi tuna steak.  Instead I was promised by the chefs that everything we cooked would be “edible.”  Our tenderloin was cooked for us before we got to class and our tuna steaks were overdone, as a result of having to wait in line at the grill and not knowing what a proper cooking time was.  We almost burned our couscous because we were waiting on additional ingredients before we could move to the next step.   

The good part: The bright point in the evening was the food.  It was decent and there was plenty of it.  We tried several things we hadn’t tried before, namely the tuna steaks and couscous.  I think that for the sake of experience, and confidence with our own cooking skills, it was a worthwhile evening. 

For the price, I think I will limit classes to ones where 1. we don’t already know how to do most of it and 2. they are actual instructional classes.  After our fantastic experience at Knife Skills, our expectations might have been a little high.  Also, we might try to look around at some of the other classes offered in our area to see if they might be better suited to us.