One thing you should know about me: I love to cook. When I still lived at home I would cook almost every night with my dad. From teriyaki salmon to a perfect, juicy steak, I loved sitting down to eat a meal that I had worked hard to put on the table.
Needless to say, this changed drastically when I moved out of my house and into my dorm room (sans a fully stocked kitchen). As hard as I tried, my micro fridge and array of a la carte snacks did not allow me to create meals of the same effect so I decided to grab my gal pals sign up for a cooking class at Sur La Table .
After getting lost in a parking garage and having to ask for directions, we finally arrived at the Sur La Table cooking class. Despite being the youngest people there by a good fifteen years, we tied on our red aprons and approached our cooking station feeling confident.
Appetizer:
Appetizers were stuffed endives with grapes, blue cheese, and pecans. After figuring out wtf an endive is, we chopped and mixed per the direction of the instructor, Paschelle. We felt fancy AF with these bite-sized snacks and were delighted that they tasted delicious. The saltiness of the blue cheese was juxtaposed by the sweet grapes, and the crunchy pecans added a delightful texture.
Entree:
Next up was pan-roasted chicken with sage jus and fall squash risotto with shaved parmesan. Are you drooling yet? My job was to prepare the chicken. To cook the chicken, I seasoned it with salt and pepper and then pan fried it until it was crispy and brown. The jus (pronounced ‘joos’) was made in the pan used to cook the chicken and was a mixture of garlic, mustard, butter, and other spices. This was perfectly placed on the squash risotto that was, do I even dare say, more fall than the notorious pumpkin spice latte.
Dessert:
Saving the best, and prettiest, for last. These mini apple rose tarts tasted just as good as they looked, and although we ate all the extra tart dough we still made room for these tarts. The crust resembled sugar cookies and the caramelized apples were sweet and sugary.
After practically licking the crumbs off our plates, we happily embraced our food babies and waddled out of the class. This cooking class had been a refreshing break from past two months of dining hall food and I can’t wait to go again. This is an experience I would highly recommend to all my friends, college students or not, but until then we can pretend that our dorm room creations are worthy of top chef.