NC San Diego Cooking Classes

We had a cooking class with Chef Pharrell for a friend’s birthday party. I felt that she was accomodating, very instructive, and fairly cool under pressure. Let me explain: we were four ladies in the class and there were going to be ten people for dinner. This was not the usual size of the group she was used to serving for, so it took us quite a bit longer than expected to finish cooking. We were also quite a bit of beginners to cooking so we had lots of questions, which she was very good about answering. She covered details, such as how to hold a knife, what kind of cutting boards are good to use, pans to use, etc. etc. Near the end of the day, we were quite behind, but she was always polite despite pushing us forward to make sure the meal would be served at a reasonable time.
How it could be better? More preparation on her part would serve to avoid circumstances of not having exactly the right foods for the class (we had scallops, which proved to be a tough thing to cook especially if you don’t buy it at the right place) or we should just use fail proof recipes. It may also be helpful to suggest that we hold questions to the end of class to make sure we stayed on time. A time schedule/​itinerary showed to the class beforehand would also help to make sure we stayed on time and so that we could have a better idea of what kind of skills we would be learning.
It was a fun night, and I’d recommend doing it!

Had Chef Pharrell over last night and what a wonderful and unique way to spend an evening with friends.
The service was great and the hands on training was a lot of fun. At first it felt as though there wouldn’t be much need for our participation but that quickly changed and we were all engaged with various parts of the meal. Chef also had an assistant, Martha, who was amazing. Why was Martha amazing you ask? Well the worst part of cooking for me is the clean up. Did not have to worry about that here because every time a dish got dirty, Martha was there to clean it. In one instance, my wine glass was empty and I found it to be washed. I was just going to pour another glass anyway.
The food… well that was amazing. No, not because we cooked it but rather because we were able to learn some recipes new to us.
Dinner started out by making a goat cheese soufflé. Had never made or probably even eaten a soufflé before. Although it tasted wonderful, there is a lot to go into making a soufflé and I’m not sure that I would ever go through the hassle of making one again. Guess I might be lazy that way.
Next, we had to prepare the beef tenderloin. This was prepared by rubbing the meat with garlic cloves and adding salt and pepper to taste. It was then wrapped and placed in the refrigerator to marinate. When it was time to cook, it was pan seared until brown on all sides then placed in oven.
While the meat was cooking we made, arguably my favorite part of the meal… a mushroom ragout with brown sauce. Being a lover of mushrooms, this was an absolute delicacy to be served with the meat.
Cannot wait to try this again and to learn some different recipes.