Series of Cooking Classes: Hands-On in Seattle

	Just wanted you to know how much I enjoyed the European Series. I really appreciate the effort that you put into each class, from the menus/recipes to the background pages. It really helps to have the historical reasons behind the cuisine.
—Student of our Summer Cuisine of Europe Series

Students Fillet Salmon in the Fish Class

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Culinary Masters Series
New Series Begins January 2008! — Waiting List Available

Hundreds of students have taken our Culinary Techniques and Culinary Essentials series and have vastly improved their cooking skills. But there is always more to learn and further to go down the culinary road, and a great many of these students have requested that we teach another series which will carry on their education. After a great deal of thought and planning, we have created this series to answer that need.

We asked around: What's the difference between a regular series of cooking classes and an advanced series? "Homework!" answered several students. Other feedback included "more hands-on practice" and "more top-shelf ingredients." This Master Series will bring you all of that and more, with in-depth learning, lots of tasting and flavor-building, and high-end foods like lobster and duck breasts. "Homework" might be putting things a little strongly, but we'll have projects and suggestions for you to continue on your own during each week of the series.

The Culinary Masters Series comprises nine classes, as follows (class order is subject to change):

1. Advanced Knife Skills, Kitchen Organization, and Presentation. This class kicks off the series with concepts we'll be utilizing throughout the rest of the classes. We'll go in-depth to cover knife skills, focusing on speed and efficiency as well as a variety of important knife cuts; throughout the next eight classes we'll continue to work on these skills. Also in this class we will cover the concept of mise en place, getting organized to cook, and the huge importance of this ability. We'll work on "nesting" kitchen tasks to best utilize cooking time and do several mise en place exercises—these skills will be practiced in each of the subsequent classes. Finally, we'll discuss the concepts involved in plate presentation and garnishing; all of the classes in this series will have you practicing presentation techniques to continue this lesson.

A Plethora of Stock

2. Advanced Stocks and Glaces. Stock is perhaps the single-most important foundational flavor element, most notably for sauces. Our Culinary Techniques Series Stocks class covers "large stocks," veal and chicken, which can be used for a very wide variety of applications. This class will go further into stocks, focusing on "small stocks" like lamb, duck, and pork. We will work on flavor-building and quality. We'll also make glace, deeply reduced and extremely flavorful stock that is the sauce cook's goldmine. Photo: Students make veal, chicken, fish, and pork stock as well as mushroom essence.

3. Advanced Sauce Techniques. Picking up where we've left off with stocks and glaces, we'll now look at their most glamorous application: sauces. This class will have a very intense focus on sauce-making technique, making sure students understand the basic processes of making several sauces so that you can feel comfortable making them without recipes.

4. Sexy Soups. Another application of high-quality stock is soup, and this class will look at soups as an important flavor and texture elements to a multi-course meal. We're not talking about your everyday chicken noodle or beef barley soup here, but rather deeply flavorful, inspired soups that will add very important elements to your menus.

Very Fresh Lobster

5. Advanced Seafood. Our emphasis in this class is high-end seafood such as crab, lobster, calamari, skate, mussels, and oysters. Many people don't want to spend the money on live lobster because they don't feel confident cooking it or dealing with it. We will conquer those worries and give you a strong sense of confidence with these shellfish as well as other types of seafood, going deeper into poaching and other cooking methods.

6. Advanced Roasting, Boning, and Meats. This class will focus especially on the fun topic of ballotines (meat that has been boned, stuffed, rolled, and roasted or braised), with lots of practice boning and trussing. We'll also do a rack of lamb.

7. Advanced Sauté Skills. You and your sauté pan will soon be best friends. We will focus on the sauté cook's art of flipping and tossing food in the pan as well as searing, caramelizing, sweating, and a lot of work with deglazing, making pan sauces and gravies. We'll feature duck breasts on tonight's menu.

8. Garde Manger and Charcuterie. Garde manger is the art of the cold kitchen, often including any cold dishes from salads to cold soups. This class will cover pâtés and terrines as well as forcemeats, including at least one homemade sausage.

9. Advanced Desserts. It's always nice to end with something sweet! In contrast to the Kitchen Desserts class in our Culinary Essentials series, this class will feature more high-end restaurant-style desserts, working a great deal with the garnishes and presentation elements that make those magazine-page plates so beautiful. We'll do some sugar work, as well as practice with meringues, soufflés, chocolates, and homemade marshmallows.

Registration Information:
Where: CC House, Beacon Hill.
Who: Classes 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9 taught by Chef Gabriel Claycamp; classes 2, 7, and 8 taught by Chef Katie Coleman.
When: Nine consecutive Tuesdays, 6-9 pm, beginning January 22, 2008. Class dates are 1/22, 1/29, 2/5, 2/12, 2/19, 2/26, 3/4, 3/11, and 3/18.
How Much: $690 for nine classes. Each class includes a full meal. Registration is limited to 10 students. If you need to miss a class, you can make it up when the series is next offered.
How: This series is full; to be placed on the waiting list, please email us. Check out "The Fine Print" for registration details including information about our very flexible makeup policy in case you need to miss a class.

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