Cooking Class a` la Carte

What an amazing evening!
I spent my Tuesday evening in the company of 20 children and their parents cooking a three course meal from the cookbook Cozy Cooking.

I had picked out three dishes that are easy to make for anyone despite their previous cooking skills, recipes that can be served as an every day meal or for special occasions, especially the salad and dessert.

The menu was:

Pizza with various toppings that only the participants imagination set the limit for.
Mango salad, which is one of my favourite summer salads, so fresh and juicy it is great for any potluck or BBQ gathering as well as just eating at home all by yourself.
Ice Cream Soda, it is what it says it is. Vanilla ice cream with soda. So simple and what a hit with the kids (and adults).

We started the evening with a few instructions on washing our hands and since I had recently discovered a wonderful video on youtube about just that, I threw it in and showed how you can help spare the planet some garbage by only using 1 paper towel each time you wash your hands.
You can see the video here.

Hygiene is very important to me when cooking and especially when cooking for others or in a large group as we had for this event. So make sure to always have clean hands and utensils before you start cooking!

We began with the pizzas, I had pre made the dough, so it was ready to roll out.
We chopped a lot of various toppings, such as mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, pepperoni, and grated a few cheeses.

A funny side note to the cheese is that I had asked Bob to buy some cheddar cheese for me on his way home from work one day and he showed up with a smoked cheddar and I was not happy. Gave him a hard time about how he could possibly think that I wanted smoked cheddar to put on pizza etc. etc. I cooled down after a while and went out to buy a regular piece of cheddar.
As it turns out I decided to bring both cheeses to the event and to my surprise the smoked cheddar was the favourite!! Shame on me 🙂

Each group made their own very unique pizza with their favourite toppings, and although none of the groups decided try my own personal favourite: Tuna with pineapple! All the pizzas looked and tasted amazing.

Next up was the mango salad which calls for a few fresh red chilli peppers.
The kids were eager to try them as they were, which I don’t recommend at all, but they got the opportunity to chop them very finely and we only had one girl who got a burn on her lips from accidentally touching her mouth after cutting the chilli.
She got a scoop of ice cream to cool it down, I think it helped a little bit.

Pizzas were baking in the oven and soon attracted a bunch of people from other workshops at the school who wanted to know what exactly we were making in here that smelled so good 😀

We had a great time eating our newly made dinner and I think a few family members and friends sneaked in to get a bite of the good stuff. Maybe I have to come back to do another cooking class so more people can join in.

Now it was time for the long awaited dessert.
Each person got a glass of ice cream soda and the silence covered the room for a few seconds till the enjoyment spread through laughter and loud appreciations for the dessert.

Everyone had a great evening, myself included, it was a pleasure sharing and teaching some of our recipes from the cookbook and witness how well they were received by both children and adults.

So this is definitely not the last time we will be doing cooking classes, so spread the word and we will come!
Click here for more information about how you can have your own private cooking classes with us.

Thank you to everyone who attended the event, all the staff and students helping out before and after and thanks to my friend Donna for asking me in the first place to come and cook with her students and their parents.

Thank you!