Sweet River Studios

This class was a little different. We made a mushroom pate and a chicken liver with red marmalade made out of red onion and raisins. Both were served on toast.   We made a stuffing from beef, sausage and aromatics and stuffed some pieces of zucchini, tomatoes, mushrooms and peppers. We also stuffed pieces of beef with sausage and served with vegetables. We made two dishes using puff pastry. One was topped with caramelized onion, anchovies and black olives and the other we made little pastries filled with cheese and softened leeks and herbs. And last but not least, we stuffed roasted eggplant with a vegetable herb and cheese mix. We also made something called socca. It's a thin pancake that's made using chickpea flour, water, olive oil and cumin. You make it like a crepe and broil it in the oven. It's thin like a cracker almost. Surprisingly, quite tasty.  I believe the class really liked the cheese stuffed pastry and the caramelized onion puff pastry the ...

I've made mozzarella at home once. It turned out kinda hard and dense and it was very labor intensive. It gave me a huge appreciation for that ball of fresh mozzarella you buy in the package for $7 or $8 dollars and I'm fairly sure the price is way too low. But anyway, we made a short cut version of mozzarella in class today and it turned out better. Basically the curd was purchased so we didn't have to separate curds from milk and all we did really was warm it up with fairly hot water so that you could form the curd into a ball shape. No kneading, no pulling and no stretching. If you work and pull the cheese curds then the cheese will get tough so we didn't do any of that. We used a good salt and ate the cheese with tomato slices, basil and balsamic and olive oil. So our first salad of the day was a fresh caprese salad. We also made a queso fresco, which we crumbled on salad greens with a green onion dressing and fresh made croutons.    We also made a marscapone...

Today's lunch was all about lamb. Lamb and turning vegetables. We made a lamb stew with spring vegetables as well as a chicken version for those who didn't want to eat lamb.   We also made braised lamb shank stew served over couscous and popovers and a salad. The lamb was really good and rich and the price of lamb is pretty high. This would definitely be a meat you would want to serve to impress others but it's probably not going to be in most households on a daily basis.