Magical Seasoning

I had a friend at Culinary school introduce me to Johnny's seasonings. 

 Like the label says, it's pure magic.

 

 I mainly use Johnny's when cooking meat but its uses extend to vegetable, home made fries, soups and burgers. 

It's important to salt and season your meat before cooking; it helps the seasoning become part of the meat rather than have it taste like meat with salt. I like to sprinkle Johnny's on just before I start to cook the meat. You can also use other spice rubs but this one is already mixed! It works well on any kind of meat- beef, pork, chicken, and fish.

Simply seasoning the meat before cooking makes a big difference in the dish. Try it for your next meal and wow your tasters with its' depth a flavor!

Valentine Education

Fighting the masses to go out to eat on Valentines Day can be stressful. So why not have a night at home and eat a delectable meal by candlelight?

Our cooking class this week focused on a meal for just the two of you. The menu was fancy, familiar and finger-licking good! We started with handmade French Bread.

  

This bread recipe easily fit into a kitchen aid mixer.

We put our bread into these french bread pans, available at Bed Bath and Beyond, Orson Gygi, Williams Sonoma and many other stores.

Like any other bread, you must let it rise.

 

The bread was a little bit crunchy on the outside and very soft on the inside. We served it with some herbed compound butter: butter blended with other flavors, in this case, savory herbs!

We then started making our Salted Caramel Gelato

 Starting to caramelize the sugar.

 

Chef Lou showing us what scalded milk looks like.

 Adding the cream/milk mixture to the caramel. After mixing it together, put the batch in an ice cream maker. In about 15 mins you will have silky smooth ice cream!

 Our entree for the night was Breast of Chicken Florentine

 After breading the chicken in a 3-step process, we fried it on the stove

We then started on dessert: a pear frangipane galette

Frangipane is a term for a filling made from or flavored like almonds

galette is a term for a flat, round or free-form crusty cake

 Spread the filling on the flower shaped pate sucre dough, and arrange the cut pears

 Turn over the "flower petals" and you're ready to bake it! We served it with a scoop of the salted caramel gelato

The entire meal was delicious! Now we can practice before the big day!

Our next cooking class is February 12th: Comfort Food night

Baby Boy

We love themed parties. We love creating new and inventive food. Clearly, we just love food!

For one of our events we catered a baby shower. We had lots of fun incorporating the colors and creating bite-size food for the event.

Can you guess what gender the mother was expecting?

 

We made cute blue and white striped meringue stars with edible glitter.

We even made topiaries with the stars!

For the shower we made an original drink: "Rubber Ducky Mocktail"

It was a blue raspberry, "bubble bath" mocktail complete with a floating rubber ducky!