Culinary Communion: Class Photos

	The kitchen is the room that nurtures our souls and our bodies. It's the hearth of the 21st-century house, and everybody naturally congregates there.
—Regina Leeds, author of The Zen of Organizing

Series Classes Individual Classes Wine Education Class Photos

Cuisine of Europe Series 1, July 2002

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France is often culinarily divided into north and south as regions of butter and oil. Butter is the predominant fat of the north, while oil—especially olive oil but also walnut oil—is the predominant fat of the south. The Mediterranean influences on the southern portion of the country are very clear, and while each area has specific foods and culinary traditions, they are tied together by the foods reaped from land and sea and by the pervasive sunshine of the Mediterranean.

For this, the third class in the Cuisine of Europe Series 1, we created a fisherman's feast from the south of France, beginning with pork rillettes, then a huge pissaladière, bouillabaisse with croutons covered in rouille, and finishing with la negre, a flourless chocolate cake of only four ingredients.

Chef Gabriel explains a technique as one student works the "sauté station" of the CC House kitchen.

The students work together on the meal in what sometimes becomes "organized chaos." Chef Gabriel often draws everyone's attention away from their individual tasks to see an important step or technique.

Sometimes it's best to mix by hand!

For sautéing we use both Viking pans and good-old cast-iron.

Students listen while they work, as Chef Gabriel explains about the culinary culture of the South of France.

The Pissaladière, an onion-and-anchovy tart that was incredibly delicious.

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