Chef Kevin's Cooking Classes: Cooking Basics 101 Class – Session 3; Summer Desserts; Deboning Fish Videos

Post Date: 29 June 2015

Cooking Basics 101 Class – Session 3 – July 2

This week we will be doing something a little different. Instead of a salad, we will me making a Minestrone, which will give us plenty of practice for our knife skills. For our dessert, we will be using the oven instead of the fridge, making individual Olive Oil Lemon Pound Cakes.
Our main dish this week will be Salisbury Steak. In the first class we prepared our main dish on the stove top and in the second we used the oven. This week we will use both, pan searing the meat on the stove top and then finishing it off in the oven. While finishing in the oven, we will deglaze the pan and make a reduction sauce. To accompany the steak, we will me making Broiled Zucchini with Tomato.

Summer Desserts – Clafouti and Strawberry Cheesecake

This past week I made a couple of desserts using fresh strawberries. We will be making these in my Summer Desserts class in July. The Clafouti (pictured above) is a French dessert from the Limousin region usually made with cherries, but any fresh summer fruit, like strawberries or blueberries will also work. The berries are baked in a batter of flour, eggs, sugar and vanilla. Here is a typical recipe:

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/strawberry-clafouti

The Strawberry Cheesecake Pie recipe came from a June 2014 issue of Food Network Magazine (pie pictured above). Its primary ingredients are cream cheese, plain Greek yogurt (I used non-fat) and lemon zest. The topping is strawberries tossed with honey. It is a no bake recipe, ideal for those hot summer days when you don’t want to turn the oven on. Here is the link to the recipe.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/strawberry-cheesecake-pie.html

Deboning Fish

In last week’s class, I was asked if any of the knife skills videos in the handouts from the first class included deboning fish. They did not, so I am listing below some videos on this topic.

These first two show all the steps involved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi31wlBEahs

http://www.inyourkitchen.com/video_detail.php?id=MjA=

This one shows how to debone a fish you have cooked whole.

http://video.epicurious.com/watch/seafood-how-to-bone-a-cooked-fish

This one has a great tip/technique for removing the pin bones, so it can be used in conjunction with either of the first two above.

http://www.finecooking.com/item/50277/how-to-de-bone-a-fish-fillet

This video focuses on techniques to remove the skin.

http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/food-recipes/cooking/videos/a30628/skinning-and-deboning-fish-fillets-video-822993324001/

Upcoming Classes

Here are the upcoming classes I will be teaching for the summer term.

July 11 – Saturday Morning – Beach House Brunch – Plum Center