Artisan Sourdough Bread Baking
Basic Baking Skills
Chocolate Workshop
Cold Soups for the Summer
Cooking Skills for the Novice
Essential Oils Demonstration Dinner
Gourmet Cooking with a Modest Budget
Gourmet Pizza at Home
Gourmet Vegan
Introduction to Raw Food
Knife Skills
Mastering the Chicken
Mediterranean Seafood Cookery
Modern Greek Cuisine
Modern Scandinavian Demonstration Dinner
Octopus & Squid
Oven Braising Techniqies
Pasta Workshop
Raw Deserts
Rustic Cooking of Sicily
Sous Vide Cooking
Tapas Workshop
Thai Demonstration DInner
Understanding Molecular Gastronomy
Vegetarian Fingerfoods
Winter Soups & Stews

Artisan Sourdough Bread Baking
10,000 years later and there's no better way to raise bread. In the beginning, all risen breads were sourdough, or naturally leavened, breads, and there is no real reason they can't be today. The move to using commercial baking yeast was brought about to save time, not to make better bread. With practice, you can get the taste, crumb and rise you want from sourdough. This Class will teach you how to make, feed and maintain a sourdough starter, how to transform it into a firm starter and then how to make that into really good bread. You will learn the proper techniques for handling the dough and how to bake it for optimum results. Why pay $5.00 and up for a loaf of bread when you can bake your own for less than $1.00?
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Basic Baking Skills
Baking is perhaps one of the most difficult kitchen skills to master. You can follow a recipe faultlessly step by step but without the knowledge of proper technique and the kitchen science involved, a recipe that seems like a no-brainer can easily flop. This class is designed to give you the necessary knowledge about the ingredients, the techniques and the chemistry that combine the art and science of perfect cooking.
In this class you will learn how to make an apple pie with the flakiest of crusts, super light buttermilk biscuits, flowerless chocolate torte with bittersweet chocolate genache, rosemary foccacia and the best way to make a perfect cookie dough.
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Chocolate Workshop 
This class is designed to not only teach the participants various basic recipes but to also provide an education in the history and science of chocolate
We will be making:
Chocolate Mousse
Flourless Chocolate Cake
Chocolate truffles
Bittersweet Chocolate Pudding
Belgian Chocolate Soup
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Cold Soups for the Summer
When the dog days of summer are upon us a chilled soup as the main course can be refreshing and satisfying. In this class we will prepare avocado with citrus poached lobster, white gazpacho with chicken and grape salad, yellow heirloom tomato and mango with wild salmon tartar and for dessert cantaloupe and Riesling with minted Greek yoghurt. This class isn’t just about cold soup, as you will also learn the most humane way to dispatch a live lobster and work with local small farm chicken and the best wild salmon.
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Cooking Skills for the Novice

Once upon a time people grew up learning cooking skills passed down from their mother and grandmother. At least the girls did. Today, many do not, or did not get that opportunity. If you would like to cook, but could use some hands-on basics before tackling the recipes from a book, this is the class for you. Participants will learn how to cook green beans, carrots and broccoli so they are properly done and not a pool of mush, perfect potatoes au gratin, a bistro style roast chicken with pan gravy that stays moist and a custard laden, moist, chocolate bread pudding that tastes as though it came from a French restaurant. We will discuss the science behind the cooking and the ways to foolproof these techniques.

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Essential Oils Demonstration Dinner
Aroma permeates every cuisine from ancient to modern and it is evident that aroma not taste that is our primary experience of food. Essential oils have been around for a long time but it wasn’t until recently that chefs really started to take notice and incorporated them into everyday cooking. This class is a demonstrational four course dinner that utilizes aromatic oils in every course. The menu will be
Warm Apple and Cinnamon Bark Soup with Cocao
Braised DuckSea Bass with Rose Beaurre Blanc and PorciniBlack Pepper
Scented Pork Confit
Jasmine Tea Panna Cotta with Lavender Shortbread
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Gourmet cooking with a Modest Budget

In today’s economy diners are looking to eat well without spending a large amount of cash. This class will teach you how to prepare dishes that taste and present themselves “out of the ordinary” while remaining affordable. The participants will prepare:
Asian Style Fish Cakes with Ponzu Sauce and Arugula
Flambéed Spinach Salad with Bacon
Herb Roasted Chicken with Moroccan Vegetable Ragout and Couscous
Apple Crepe Cake with Caramel Sauce

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Gourmet Pizza at Home 
When it comes to making pizza at home, store bought crust doesn’t quite cut it. And frozen pizza? Lets not even go there. This class will teach you what kind of flour to use and how to easily make 2 types of dough, crispy thin and deep dish. Also you will learn how to properly top and bake the pie so you won’t end up with a soggy mess.
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Gourmet Vegan
Every year there are more vegan cookbooks that offer up good solid fare but seem to fall short in extravagance and presentation. Being vegan has nothing to do with taking a vow of poverty. In this class we will prepare vegan cuisine with high quality gourmet ingredients while employing the presentation techniques from upscale restaurants. For the first course we will make rosemary foccacia and an antipasto of shredded eggplant with shaved fennel, fresh artichokes braised in olive oil and peeled miniature heirloom tomatoes with 25 year old artisan balsamic vinegar. For our main course we will prepare a risotto of bamboo rice, asparagus, macadamia nut butter.
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Introduction to Raw Food
More and more people are experimenting with raw food or incorporating elements of it into their daily dietary routine. With nothing heated above 118 F and strictly vegan, working with raw food recipes means replacing sautéing, baking, boiling, steaming and frying with sprouting, soaking, dehydrating and juicing. This class will teach you some of the basic techniques and recipes of raw foods. In this class we will prepare “cream of mushroom soup”, “mashed potatoes and gravy”, “fettuccine alfredo”, and “carrot cake”. The names are familiar but the methods and ingredients will surprise you. 
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Knife Skills
A knife skills class can dramatically improve your efficiency in the kitchen, assuage fears and boost confidence. This class will teach you how to choose the right knives for you, how to hold and use them safely and which knife to use for different tasks. After a couple of hours of slicing, dicing, chopping, mincing, filleting and paring we will turn the fruits of our labor into a shared meal.
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Mastering the Chicken
Chicken is perhaps the most popular meat in America and still one of the most affordable ones. Unfortunately production methods have all but robbed the chicken of its flavor and, in some instances, made it a less than healthy dining choice. This class will focus on methods of handling and preparing chicken. We will work with organic small farm birds but will also cook up a factory farm grocery store bird for a taste comparison. We will truss a bird with butchers twine to make a perfect bistro style roast chicken and potatoes, we will debone, stuff and sauté breasts, slow braise the legs coq au vin style and do two preparations with the wings, “chicken lollypops” with the upper and deboned, mushroom stuffed with the lower. 
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Mediterranean Seafood Cookery
When one thinks of the Mediterranean one has to think of all the wonderful seafood cookery practiced on the coastlines of Southern Europe and North Africa. This class will explore those traditions and prepare some classic dishes while learning the correct techniques for handling seafood. In this class we will prepare:
Tangiers style stuffed calamari
Sea bass baked in a salt crust
Sicilian style marinated swordfish
Spanish style bacalao with shrimp, saffron, leeks and potatoes
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Modern Greek Cuisine
Greek cooking is perhaps one of the oldest cuisines in Western culture.
Known for it’s deep, hearty, soul satisfying flavors and rustic taverna style presentation, Greek cuisine has universal appeal. Unfortunately most Greek restaurants in this country and even many in Greece feature generic concoctions prepared with cheap ingredients that garner mass-market audiences without doing justice to authentic Greek cooking. This class will focus on taking Greek classics, done properly, but with a lighter touch and more contemporary presentation. We will take the classic Avgolemono soup and turn it into a light refreshing first course foam. Crispy fried salt cod will be paired with garlicky skordalia puree and citrus pickled beets. We will make Individual Moussakas with wild greens. For dessert we will prepare spiced rice pudding with apricots, cherries and sheep’s milk yoghurt.
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Modern Scandinavian Demonstration Dinner
We have a vacation home in Sweden and, after spending ample time there and traveling around other parts of Scandinavia, we have come to realize that the cooking there today defies all stereotypes. Traditional ingredients have fused with outside influences to create a hybrid that is bold and exciting. The menu for this dinner will be:
Juniper Apple Soup
Lobster Rolls with pickled pears and Ginger Granita
Crispy Duck with Glögg Sauce and Mango Risotto
Black Pepper Cheesecake with Cranberry Compote
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Octopus and Squid 
This class will familiarize the participants with the handling and preparation of everyone’s favorite Cephalopods. It is important when preparing these to have a good understanding of proper cooking technique as there is a fine line between tender and juicy and too rubbery to chew.
In this class we will prepare:
Fried Calamari with Homemade Tartar Sauce
Braised Octopus with Red Wine, Onions and Macaroni
Thai Style Squid in Coconut Milk
Baked Stuffed Calamari
Marinated Octopus Salad
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Oven Braising Techniques
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin the famous French gastronome once observed, “Some people are born to cook but they must learn to braise”, How true, Braising takes time and patience and its outcome requires much more exactitude than other techniques of the savory kitchen. This class will give you the braising “chops” that your dinner guests will assume you must have been born with. We will braise shortribs with mushrooms, chicken in wine, duck legs with prunes and potatoes, herbed tomatoes and fresh fennel bulbs.
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Pasta Workshop
This class teaches the art of fresh pasta making. We will make dough from semolina, to hand form orrechiette, potato gnocchi and egg noodle dough for ratatouille and cheese filled ravioli. This class will explain the science behind the choice of different flours, the proper cooking techniques for obtaining the best results, which sauces go with what shapes and the ease in which anyone, with a little understanding, can create beautiful artisan pasta at home.
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Raw Desserts
As opposed to baking raw food deserts require a whole different level of preparation.
This class will teach you, by sprouting, soaking, dehydrating and marinating, how to prepare ahead some of the building blocks of the raw food desert pantry. In addition to learning how  to prepare these staples we will make raspberry tiramisu, crunch bar torte, carrot cake, peach cheesecake, carob mousse and cashew butter fudge cookies.
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The Rustic Cooking of Sicily
The island of Sicily offers a style of cuisine unique to the Italian kitchen. Influenced by the Greeks, Moors and French, the Sicilian table is redolent with fragrant spices, aromatic herbs and a rustic cooking style that embodies the best of Mediterranean gastronomy. We will prepare tuna carpaccio with peppered baby arugula and mustard sauce, sweet and sour rabbit with olives, almonds and capers, handmade saffron tagliatelle and homemade goats milk ricotta with chocolate.
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Sous Vide Cooking
Sous vide is French for "under vacuum" and describes a method of cooking in vacuum sealed plastic pouches at low temperatures for long times. At high end restaurants across the country like Per Se, Charlie Trotter’s and Alinea the intense heat and scrape of pans against the stove is giving way to an almost placid atmosphere, the barely audible hum of water baths that run 24 hours a day. This is serious cooking and not Rice a Roni boil in a bag. This class will cover the basics of sous vide from the equipment used to the science involved and you will learn how to institute sous vide cooking in your kitchen for minimal expense, how to use it safely and experience food that is artfully prepared using the optimal cooking method. We will make the 45 minute egg, perfectly rare steak and tuna and sample shortribs that have slow cooked for 72 hours.
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Tapas Workshop
Tapas were last years black but the concept is still pretty popular today because the culinary scene in Spain is about as hot as it gets. Much of what is being dished out in Spain these days seems über modern but, as with any old world cuisine, it is deeply rooted in tradition. We will prepare 8 different tapas starting with Catalan tomato bread with Manchego cheese, Galician copper stewed octopus with paprika, tomato seed fillets and watermelon pinchas, fried fresh artichokes with Serrano ham, littleneck clams in green sauce, rack of lamb with honey allioli, meatballs with peaches and rare tuna with an Andalucian salad.
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Thai Demonstration Dinner
The problem with much of what is billed as Thai cooking in the United States is that it is prepared with factory farm meats and processed foods. As with most Chinese food served in America, Thai cuisine has strayed from authenticity to the land of “adapted for the American palate”.
This dinner will demonstrate how to prepare some standards of the Thai kitchen correctly.
The Menu for this dinner will be
Lemongrass Chicken Coconut Soup
Red Curried Fish Cakes with Cucumber Peanut Relish and Sweet Chili Sauce
Massaman Beef with Sticky Rice
Tapioca and Pandana Leaf Pudding.
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Understanding Molecular Gastronomy
Molecular gastronomy is a term that most are now familiar with, but have only a vague notion of. In this class we will discuss the genre then prepare and work with some of the components and equipment that form the backbone of this style of cooking, By making spheres, gels, foams, sheets and emulsifications, participants will get a better understanding of the science behind the art.
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Vegetarian Finger Foods

Are you having a party and vegetarians are coming? Don’t want to stick them with a crudité tray and dip while the carnivores have so much more to choose from? Fear not, it is quite easy to prepare an innovative and diverse vegetarian spread that the meat eaters at your bash will be happy to indulge in. Participants will prepare an array of small snacks, artfully presented, that will wow and satisfy. The menu includes:
Braised Tofu in Ginger Broth
Herbed Goat Cheese Stuffed Snow Peas
Eggplant Caviar Canapés
Onion fritters with Cucumber Banana Raita
Gougéres (French Cheese Puffs)
Curried Potato and Pea Samosas

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