Sweet River Studios

The last 5 or 6 weeks of my cooking class focused on desserts. From classic french pastries such as eclairs and profiteroles to homemade ice cream, cakes, crepes, mousses and souffles. Unfortunately, we didn't get to make macaroons since our instructor is allergic to nuts and therefore almond flour was out but that's okay. We learned to make pate a choux dough, which is used to make eclairs and profiteroles and of course you can make them savory instead of sweet, which we did by adding cheese. We then used the dough to make a little sandwich with bacon, onion and arugula. We also made swans out of the choux dough and filled them with pastry cream and dusted them with powdered sugar.    And finally, we made churros from the choux dough as well. We fried them and then tossed them with sugar and cinnamon. We also made lunch on dessert day since it's hard to eat 8 different kinds of dessert for lunch without throwing up so we made a paella with sausages, ch...

Fresh pasta is definitely not hard to make but it's a lot more time consuming than opening a box of dried stuff and pouring it into a pot of boiling water. We made two types of pasta a yellow pasta and a semolina pasta. The yellow pasta is literally all purpose flour and egg, while the semolina pasta got semolina and AP flour, eggs, salt and olive oil. This pasta is a little tougher than the yellow pasta. We made a bolognese with beef and pork, a carbonara with cream, eggs and bacon, a spinach cheese ravioli and a shiitake mushroom pasta sauce. This class was definitely busy rolling sheets of pasta and making sauces so there was no time to run around taking pictures except when I sat down to enjoy some of the fruits of labor of 8 people. I thought the carbonara or the mushroom sauces would be my favorite but oddly enough it was the bolognese. If you've never tried making fresh pasta, I would encourage you to try it at least once. And this is something that if you want ...

Oh the mighty little egg. Are you good for me or bad for me? I don't know and I don't care. You're delicious and versatile. You will always be welcome in my home. Our egg week consisted of omelettes, Portuguese eggs, deviled eggs with mushrooms and of course poached eggs with hollandaise on toast. I am of course sorry to say, I completely forgot to take pictures but in my defense, we didn't get to sit down to lunch. We had several plates of goodness eating as dishes were prepared.  I think the favorite dish we made was the Portuguese eggs. Onions and red peppers (or orange and yellow whatever color you have on had) are sauted in some oil for about 20 minutes until fairly soft. Next, you add some spices. We used oregano, basil, paprika and garlic and 2 diced tomatoes with some tomato paste and you can add some jalapeno or chili flakes for heat. You can always use canned tomatoes too. Then we spread the mixture into a glass baking dish and made wells in the pe...

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.

This week our instructor decided to have us cook cajun. I've tried to cook cajun exactly once when I tried to make a gumbo. It didn't work out all that well and if you don't know what it's supposed to taste like then how will you know if you made it right? So I was really glad when we got to make a gumbo, jambalaya, an etouffee and a cajun meatloaf with a hot sauce to put over it. We were so stuffed the time the gumbo and meatloaf was done it was unreal and we still had to make our bananas foster. I didn't get a picture of everything together because our dishes were done at different times. I was really happy with all the dishes but I would probably tone down the cayenne pepper. The etouffee was really hot and they used 1 teaspoon of cayenne instead of the 2 the recipe called for so I was grateful but I would've used 1/2 a teaspoon. I don't mind some heat in my food but I want to be able to feel my tongue after eating too.. The bananas foster...

I admit. I've never eaten duck before or at least I don't think I have. We certainly never had duck at our table growing up and you certainly can't find it it at the local grocery store. The only thing I've ever heard about duck is that it is very fatty. Well, that part is definitely right. In our duck class, we learned about prepping duck and how to cook it. We started our confit of duck legs a few weeks ago and we finished the legs by searing them.  After we seared them they were falling off the bone and I think everyone liked them the best. We also made duck a la orange, duck with flour pancakes and an asian sauce along with our duck fat roasted smashed potatoes seasoned with garlic rosemary, pureed parsnips with apple and pear and an asian inspired salad. Here's our confit duck legs after staying in the refrigerator for 4 weeks. The legs were roasted about 6 hours so they're already cooked. We seared them on each side, mostly just to heat them back up. ...