The Wonderful World of Cooking Classes
There is a plethora of delectable eateries to visit around San Luis Obispo but on nights when hunting for a parking space, having to wear a belt and small talking with a hostess are too much to take on, it’s that much sweeter to eat from the comfort of home without sacrificing the quality of dinner.
A series of cooking classes offered throughout the county provides not only the culinary tips and tricks necessary to make homemade taste gourmet, but also lessons that are rousingly entertaining.
Tasty Traditions
As heat from the oven fills the room and the scent of freshly baked bread wafts through the kitchen at Grandma Ingrid’s, Grandma Ingrid and her daughter Nicolle churn homemade butter in front of dozens of strangers.
About four times each month, the women host cooking lessons in the kitchen where Grandma Ingrid’s husband Richard ate childhood meals. Set in the countryside south of Arroyo Grande, the home is the perfect place to host lessons in cheesemaking, pie baking, and soup making from scratch. Two dozen people — a mix of old and young couples and small groups of friends — gather around the island in the kitchen to watch Nicolle demonstrate making butter with heavy cream.
“Some of you may have accidentally made butter,” Nicolle says. “We have no mistakes around here.” After first ignoring her mother’s instruction to add more salt, Nicolle decides the mix indeed needs a pinch more.
Grandma Ingrid then reminds everyone this experience is as much about family dynamics as it is a dynamic lesson. “Nobody listens to Mom,” Grandma Ingrid says, rolling her eyes, which makes the audience chuckle.
The wide-eyed students follow the mother-daughter duo into the spacious dining area, where black and white family photos hang on the walls, to watch Grandma Ingrid demonstrate how to make feta. Armed with a thermometer and butter muslin, Grandma Ingrid mixes heavy cream, rennet and citric acid in a large pot while she recounts how Nicolle pulled her out of retirement to teach these classes. It was an easy sell, according to Grandma Ingrid, who has always loved cooking and eating meals with her four children and 11 grandchildren.
After her demonstration, the students separate into small groups to make cheese. Grandma Ingrid shares a laugh with one group that fails to produce cheese curds. “You’re missing the heat!” she exclaims.
Once each pot in the room is full of feta, the students retire from stirring and join in the living room to share a spread of cheese and dips with crackers and a bowl of soup, all made from scratch by Grandma Ingrid and Nicolle.
Decadence On Full Display
Perched atop a stool at Debbie Duggan’s Central Coast Culinary, sporting a posh black bob and bright pink chef coat, Debbie describes to a class of 18 students the globe-inspired meal she is preparing. The list of a dozen decadent menu items includes chive deviled eggs with smoked salmon and a salad featuring roasted rutabaga, apple, squash and feta, served alongside a Salisbury steak with mushroom gravy. “Let’s work on getting your cholesterol up,” Debbie says. As volunteers perform a coordinated dance from cutting board to stovetop, Debbie describes the cooking process and the reasons she selects each specific type and grade of ingredient.
In her 28 years of professional cooking experience, Debbie has learned older eggs are better for hard boiling and organic carrots yield a sweeter flavor because they aren’t rinsed in chlorine like standard carrots.
As guests refill their glasses with wine they brought, Debbie explains the key to reducing sauce. “Every time you stir, it gets air in it and doesn’t reduce,” she warns. The way Debbie advises cooking a whole turkey, breast side down, sparks laughter. “Fat drips down and I guess you could say it caresses the breast,” Debbie says with a coy smile.
Students flip through the four-page recipe booklet, which reads a lot like a passport of Debbie’s travels. Just days before this class, Debbie returned from Italy, where she soaked up inspiration for new classes in the same way her ciabatta sopped up oil.
By class end, belt buckles are bulging yet nobody declines the pecan pie cobbler and oatmeal sticky cake Debbie dishes up for a sweet farewell.
Sustainable and Simple
Between chopping onions and stirring their signature vegan queso, Bryan Wells consults with his wife Kacey about the plant-based menu they’re preparing for a trio of guests. Though the meals the couple teaches to students in their homes during private lessons are meatless, only Bryan considers himself a vegetarian. “We’re really focused on meals that are sustainable and made with local ingredients,” Kacey says.
Six years before they began navigating the kitchens of strangers and instructing small groups on ways to creatively incorporate vegetables into their diets, the duo combined their self-taught culinary genius to launch Kacey Cakes. As they expanded the brand from nut-based vegan desserts to a line of dairy-free cheese sauces, curious customers began asking Kacey and Bryan how to make meatless meals at home.
]The couple’s first in-home cooking lesson took them to the kitchen of a San Luis Obispo father concerned his children weren’t eating enough vegetables. “It was a real learning experience for us,” Bryan says. “We assumed he would have the basics — measuring cups, pans, you know. But he didn’t, so we had to improvise.”
Despite eyeballing much of their measurements, Bryan and Kacey were successful in enticing the boys to eat heaping bowls of mac and cheese with their signature Kacey Queso, a blend of potatoes, carrots, cashews and nutritional yeast instead of dairy.
With each in-home lesson, the duo finds many people want to eat less meat but are afraid to take risks with vegetables. “We’re not making meals totally from scratch,” Bryan says. “We might buy gnocchi and vegan pesto from Trader Joe’s and show them how to sauté onions and sun-dried tomatoes for a simple home cooked meal anyone can make.”
