Learning some english recipes and enjoying food... as usual

Last week a friend of mine invite me to a professional cooking class... I couldn’t believe it! I love to learn from professionals and more in England where they cook different things from the ones I used to see cooked in my italian family.
The plan was to prepare a 3 course meal in less than 1 hour almost and ... To eat it all together! Just great!

So I went to Atelier Des Chef, an amazing place near Oxford Circus, very little from outside, but very well organized internally: there are 2 big kitchens, one on the street level and another downstairs and lots of cooking tools available to use in the class but especially to buy. A very cosy place with nice and welcoming people!
So we started our class around 11,30 with a Prosecco glass, gently offered, and the 3 course meal was composed by the following recipes:

Pea soup with crisp pancetta and garlic croutons
Crisp fillet of sea bass with braised fennel and brown shrimp vélouté
Chocolate and praline cream with espresso coffee emulsion and hazelnut financiers

We started with the preparation of the basic ingredients: cutting finely the onion, garlic, mint & chives, peeling the bread, and putting the potatoes to roast in the oven. And all these easy tasks were all quite difficult to do if you wanted to follow the chef's lesson: first thing He showed us how to properly cut the ingredients and it's so much more difficult of what I could have never thought!

Then we mixed some of the ingredients to prepare a very rich sauce for the veloute’ while some other were starting to deal with the mousse and financiers biscuits. This mousse made with the praline cream and the hazelnut dough for the biscuits were just great!

Finally, the financiers in the oven and the cream in the fridge, we places the fish to cook in the pan with just a little bit of oil, the fennel to boil and we concentrate on the soup, cooking the peas and frying the bread.

It was a really funny day and of course I don’t tell you how much good the food was! I loved my peas soup and the veloute’ was great, But for me the real revelation were the financiers biscuit, very similar to the "Magdalene", that I use to eat when I was little and that I loved sooo much! Now I even cooked them by my self!!! Great place and great experience!

And you? Have you ever been to some professional cookery class?

Comment (0)

The last pasta recipe from the summer

I wanted some fish in it, but also some classic italian summery flavor like the one from some fresh chopped basil or nice black olives. And because the day was so good, why don't prepare something to bring outside and eat in the park or even to bring to my friends' barbeque.

So i finally prepared cold pasta with prawns, black olives, basil and buffalo mozzarella! I can't miss Italy in this way. The pasta is "Calle" from Pastificio dei Campi and it was created  for Gennaro Esposito a very famous chef in Italy who found this elegant shape and its smooth surface particularly adequate for fish dishes and sauces ... and i followed the suggestion.

Calle Pastificio dei Campi (Duetto - 250 gr)

280 gr fresh prawns

Cook the pasta in salty boiled water for around 10 minutes. When will be cooked but still "al dente" (just a bit crunchy) drain it and pass it under cold water to stop the cooking process. Then add just a bit of olive oil to don't make the pasta stick.

Put some olive oil in a pan and cook the prawn for 2-3 minutes. In the meantime cut the olives in slices and the mozzarella and tomatoes in little cubes. Mix all together with the pasta, the prawns and some finely chopped basil.

Add some salt and pepper if needed and put it in the fridge for a bit. Serve it cold!

Comment (1)