Series of Cooking Classes: Hands-On Preserving - Charcuterie - Cheese-Making - Pickling - Canning - Preserving - Sausage - Bacon - Smoking

	Everything But the Squeal !
—A regular toast at our Charcuterie class

Doctor Frankenfurter: Heidi helps Jason load up the giant syringe with brine solution to inject a pork tenderloin with brine. We're making Canadian bacon!

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Preserving Series: Charcuterie, Cheese, and Pickles
New Series Begins in October!
The art of preserving food is ancient, and although it's not exactly necessary in these days of refrigeration and deep-freezes, it seems that the urge to get back to those old-time, down-home flavors and techniques just keeps getting stronger. Making sausages and cheeses, jams and pickles, really gets to the heart of what Culinary Communion is all about: bringing people together with the magic of food.

This series combines some important old techniques and communicates them such that you can reproduce the results at home. We will have a ton of fun making a huge variety of sausages, smoked meats, jams, pickles, cheeses, terrines, and a lot more. We'll have the advantage of being able to work on projects which take multipe weeks: we'll cure our bacon one week, hang it the next, and smoke it the next week, for example. The six-week format of this series provides learning opportunities on these longer timeline projects which we aren't usually afforded in one-day classes. You will take home lots of samples of our creations. See below for examples of our work!

Special note to those who have taken one of our Charcuterie, Garde Manger, Cheese-Making, or Canning & Preserving classes in the past: the classes in this series will be so specialized, and include so many new recipes, that you needn't worry about repetition.

The six classes are:

1. Dry-Aged Salami and Salumi: We will start proscuitto and make coppa, Tuscan salami, pepperoni, Spanish chorizo, and others that we will continue to tend throughout the remainder of the series.

2. Pickling & Canning: We'll make sauerkraut, pickled chard stems, cornichons, and a variety of other pickled items as well as preserves such as jams, jellies, preserved lemons, and such.

3. Cheese-Making: Fresh mozzarella, ricotta, mascarpone, cheddar, chevre, and more cheeses will be the focus of this class.

4. Garde Manger: Terrines, pâtés, confits. Many complex garde manger preparations must sit for a few days to a week, so we will be able to finish these and enjoy them in the next class. We'll make Pâté en Croute, Venison Terrine with Dried Cherries, Rabbit Rillettes, and more.

5. Smoking: We'll make homemade bacon, andouille, tasso, linguiça, kielbasa, and other smoked meats here as well as smoking fish and some of the cheese we made last week.

6. Fresh Sausages: We'll finish off the series with fresh sausages, those which can be made and eaten the same day, such as sweet Italian, breakfast sausage, bratwurst, chicken chile sausage, and others. This class wraps up the series with a big BBQ!

Optional Pig Breakdown. In addition to these six classes, students have the option of joining us for the Pig Breakdown on the Saturday prior to the series' start. We've ordered a whole pig which we'll use to make much of the charcuterie items in the rest of the series; the Pig Breakdown will walk students through the process of dividing that pig from whole animal to market cuts.

Registration Information:
Where: CC House at Beacon Hill.
Who: Taught by Chef Gabriel Claycamp and Chef Tyler Hefford-Anderson (alternating classes).
When: The Preserving Series proper is six consecutive Saturdays, 9 am to 2 pm, beginning October 27, 2007. Class dates are 10/27, 11/3, 11/10, 11/17, 11/24, and 12/1. The optional Pig Breakdown is Saturday, October 20, 10am-1pm. If you need to miss a class, you can make it up when the series is next offered, or in another Charcuterie, Cheese-Making, Pickling, or Garde Manger class.
How Much: $550 for the six Preserving Series classes; $79 additional for the Pig Breakdown. Each class (including the Pig Breakdown) includes a full meal. Registration is limited to 10 students.
How: This series is full; please email us to be placed on the waiting list. Please indicate in your registration whether or not you are also registering for the Pig Breakdown. 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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