Cooking Class in Door County, WI

Welcome back from the long weekend.  Hope you all enjoyed the extra day off! 

While on my vacation in Door County, Wisconsin a bunch of us were able to take an Italian cooking class at The Savory Spoon.  I was pretty excited to learn a couple new tricks of the trade, also to spend some time in the kitchen with my Mom and old friends. 

I got even more excited when I saw where we'd be cooking.  Hello dream kitchen!

The instructors gave us all a quick run down of all the dishes we'd be making, and then we split into groups and made the different meals.  My Mom and I chose a mushroom pasta, and we teamed up with a couple ladies from the Milwaukee area.  We had a great time!

The rest of the group split up making the dishes that most appealed to them.  Kacy choose a Thai dish that I'm anxious to share with you.

Our pasta ready to go in the oven!

My Mom and I getting hungry.

We had quite a bit of food when everything was finished cooking.  I think we made a pretty good dent in it all though :)

Yummy!!!  This was a creamy Italian dish and if you enjoy mushrooms you'll really like it.  It was my favorite dish out of all of them, and it's not just because I made, it's because of the full flavor!  I will definitely be making this for dinner again very soon.

Conchigle al Forno with Mushrooms & Radicchio

Serves 8

Adapted from Amy Rebhan Savory Spoon

6 oz. shiitake mushrooms, cleaned and trimmed

1 stick unsalted butter

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups finely shredded radicchio, or endive

2 1/2 cups heavy cream

1/2 grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

1/2 cup coarsely shredded Fontinia

1/2 cup crumbled Gorgonzola

2 teaspoons ricotta

6 leaves fresh sage, chopped*

1 pound pasta shells

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.

Remove the stems from the mushrooms and slice the caps about 1/4 inch thick.

Heat six tablespoons of butter in a large skillet.

Add mushrooms and 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Saute over medium heat, stirring frequently, until they're cooking through.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the mushrooms, radicchio, cream, cheese, sage and remaining salt.

Boil the pasta shells for around five minutes, drain and add to the ingredients in a mixing bowl.

Toss to combine.

Divide the pasta mixture into a shallow dish, and dot with remaining two tablespoons of butter.

Bake until bubbly and brown on top, around 8 minutes.

Enjoy!

*If you don't have fresh sage, use 1 tablespoon of fresh tarragon, thyme, or rosemary.

Desserts... again.

I have one more dessert recipe for you this week, but man oh man it's a good one!  The is the final recipe I'll give you from my Central Market cooking class; chocolate ganache.  First, I do want to prove to you that I didn't just east desserts all night.  We did have some dinner before we got down to business.  I loved these flowers too, Central Market has a great flower selection and I thought this was a proud display for us to enjoy while in our class!

Can't really go wrong with salami and cheese.

Add some carbs and a small salad and I was good to go.  And by go I mean ready to chow down on dessert.  :)

I was so hungry I used three spoons all for myself.  Just kidding!!  This was a bowl of ganache that they had made ahead of time, chilled and we rolled them into truffles.

In this case we made truffles with the ganache, but you can do many other things with it too.  The plan was rolling the chocolate in either nuts or cocoa. 

And we were off!  I'm not sure which I liked better, both were creamy and delicious.

This is a great finger dessert to make if you're having people over, also great as a little gift.  Plus they look like they took a lot of work - when in reality you didn't have to do that much, which is always a plus.

There are a lot of additions you could make to these too.  We used just chocolate and heavy cream, but you could also add brandy or triple sec.  You can also use bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, which ever you prefer. 

Hope everyone has a great weekend :)

Ganache into Truffles

Adapted from: Central Market cooking school

1.1 pounds of semi sweet chocolate

2 cups of heavy cream

Bring heavy cream to a boil over a double boiler.

Pour over chocolate in a mixing bowl and stir thoroughly.

Strain through a sieve.

Put in a bowl without covering and put into fridge.

Take out of the fridge and roll into balls, you must work fast as the chocolate comes down to room temperature very fast.

Roll in nuts, cocoa power, or whatever you wish.



Basic Desserts from Central Market

As I've stated many times before, one of my favorite places here in Dallas is Central Market.  I could wander around the store for hours and be content.  I also enjoy taking their cooking classes from time to time.  This time instead of a type of cuisine I decided to try the desserts class.  Hey, someone had to go otherwise the chefs would be bored with no students!

We made a couple different things, and the pictures show the steps throughout the process.  This was the start of a baked custard recipe.

We made them in ramekins (cutest thing ever if you don't have any!) and shredded some fresh nutmeg on top before baking them.

I've never seen a whole nutmeg or smelled one, and wow have I been missing out.  It's amazing and so fresh, the next time I am baking something that uses it I'm going to try using a fresh one instead of the jarred.  I'll keep you posted on that!

Baking away!  We worked hard and deserved the desserts when we were finished.

Weird how it was all women.... not.

Fresh (and huge) raspberries for the berry sauce.

For the custard we made a berry sauce and an Anglaise sauce to put on top.

They also showed us how to make designs on the plate by mixing the two.  Makes for a very beautiful presentation.

Besides putting the sauces on the custard, we used them for a bottom sauce for a sponge cake.  Very festive!

We made a ton of recipes, I'm going to share with you the berry sauce, and one other, but that's for tomorrow.  I loved the berry sauce because it was so versatile.  You could use it in so many dishes, and it would taste great in all of them.  Plus it's pretty simple.  We used it to top off the custard and for our sponge cake, but it would be great on top of brownies, ice cream, angel food cake, pancakes, waffles, or even straight out of the jar and into your mouth! 

Berry Sauce

Adapted from Central Market cooking school

3 cups frozen raspberries

3 tablespoons Grand Marnier or wine, to taste

2-4 tablespoons of sugar, to taste

3-4 tablespoons super fine sugar*

In a food processor puree all ingredients until smooth.

Pour puree through a fine sieve into a bowl, and chill covered.

Sauce may be made up to two days ahead and chilled and covered. 

Serve over your favorite dish and enjoy!

*To make super fine sugar, take regular sugar and pulse it in a food processor for a few minutes.  That'll make it break down so it's super fine.