4.11.2009

Cooking

I love to cook.
Love.
To cook.

I am a good cook, and rarely make an inedible misstep.
(Although decades ago there was the stuffed zucchini. We went out to eat.)
(Oh. And I shouldn't be allowed to play 'Top Chef' unsupervised.)

I'm at the point where I would like to actually learn some skills rather than self teach. I am fascinated by knife skills in particular. (Maybe because I have cut myself BADLY on more than one occasion) I don't want to work on a line or anything like that, but I do want to improve my skills and my palate so I can feed my friends and family really high quality food.
Also, I believe in local fresh ingredients and making seasonal healthy foods.

To this end, I have done two things this week.

I found a (fairly) local, reasonably priced, cooking school where they teach a 5 week, 1 night each week, basics class. Knife skills; grilling broiling and sauteing; roasting and braising; vegetables and grains; and baking. Then they offer beyond the basics, a three week course improving upon and using those skills. They also offer individual courses on 'farmers market' using the fresh local ingredients available that week, a grilling class, and even a class on Trader Joe's...what they have in store that week and how it can be used. I'm thrilled by this. So, basics here I come!

The second thing I did? I went to the Farmers Market this week, (yay spring!) and my goal is to not be afraid of unfamiliar foods. I bought Kale, and Swiss Chard. THEN I looked up what to do with it. I think I'll be doing some sauteed kale, and either a swiss chard tart, or whole wheat spaghetti with swiss chard and pecorino. I'll let you know how it goes.

Food. Yummy.

4 comments:

  1. Yep - I'm definitely heading over for dinner as soon as I get these house things sorted out......

    As an aside - if you were to hide a link here on your Multiply somewhere, I'd be around more often - I keep forgetting where you are....

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  2. Kale rocks in soups and such... definitely makes the soup for me. I've put off making Italian Wedding Soup which I'm CRAVING LIKE MAD because I can't find the kale to go in. *whimpers

    Kale. Rocks.

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  3. Huh. Just occured to me that it might be confusing to have two "Jaime's" posting here with no other reference to which ones we are. From now on I'll always reference CT in my posts. Or something.

    Now I know why you can't find anything good to eat here in CONNECTICUT. Matt and I eat garbage compared to you. I'm sure there are plenty of good places to eat... we just don't do it. Next time, I'll get the low down from Amanda first.

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  4. No confusion JinJa is actually jaime with a small 'j'. JinCt is Jaime with a capital 'J'. Problem solved.

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