Cooking with Music-French-Session II

If you haven't been here before, I occasionally teach cooking classes at home.  Each class teaches a whole menu and each menu is focused upon a culture, country or culinary form.  This is the second session of Cooking with Music-French and there were two students--mom and four-year-old daughter. 

While August isn't, perhaps, the very best time to learn how to bake quiche, it IS the very best time to learn how to make a great salad.  And is anytime a bad time to learn how to make a pie crust?  And, hey,  the quiche tastes wonderfully for lunch.  Chocolate mousse?  Whenever.  Here's today's bunch:

Chocolate Mousse = First, of course

Life is short

This is a no-egg chocolate mousse as eggs are bad boys right now:

Just melt 3/4 c chocolate chips with 3T butter and let that cool.

Whip up 1 cup of whipping cream and add 1T sugar at the end.

Fold a tiny bit of whipping cream into the chocolate to lighten it up a bit and

then fold into the chocolate the rest of the cream in three or four batches.  Spoon into pretty glasses or ramekins and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or up to a few hours.

Garnish with a dollop of whipping cream, some berries or grated chocolate

Et voila!  Mousse au chocolat!

Moving on from mousse to pate brisee, the super easy crust for the quiche.

"Hey, I can make a pie crust; who knew?"

Getting dirty...but eating fresh!  Like two minutes old.

Talk about organic food.  Making Jamie Olivers's chopped salad. (click here to see the video)

Pixie dusting the salad with kosher salt and the pepper she ground.

FINALLY getting to eat dessert.  Took long enough.

We did it.

We not only cooked, we cooked together.

What a day.

We can now make--for ANYONE!!--the following menu:

Menu

Salade Printemps (spring salad w/ fresh herbs)

Quiche avec jambon et fromage (Ham and Cheese quiche)

Mousse au chocolat  (Chocolate mousse)

Fromages (cheese)

Baguette (long, thin loaf of bread) avec buerre (with butter)

Vin: (wine)

Bourgogne (blanc) (2007)-Laboure-Roi, Meursault, Cote d'Or, France

Beaujolais (2008)- Pierre Chermette, Saint Verand, France

Next Cooking with Music is

ITALIAN

Pizza as an appetizer

Two main course soups (one vegetarian)

Apple crostada (free form pie)

Offered Saturday, September 18, 2010

12:30-?

We'll cook and eat together.

Students may invite one guest for dinner each- approximately 5:30pm

Includes wine

Cost:  $50 per student

I have one opening for this class at present, but am happy to repeat it if I have requests.

This is a meal wonderful to learn for a dinner party because everything but the pizza (and it's nearly ready) can be done in advance so that you can be...

NOT NERVOUS

HAVE TIME TO BATHE AND DRESS

ENJOY YOUR OWN PARTY

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Two-Dog Kitchen and Around the 'Hood or Kitchen:

Grilling Colorado peaches for a peach salsa or dessert...a blog to come!

There's the grilled peach salsa--perfect for bbq grilled pork chops, shrimp tacos or salmon.

Skippy Jon Jones--visiting Aunt Alyce and Uncle Dave again

And they called it "puppy love."

A few things you might do around the kitchen this week:

Buy a bunch of green beans, trim them and blanch them (2-3 min in boiling water) and throw them in freezer bags into the freezer for the winter.  I got mine for 88cents a pound.

Ditto zucchini or summer squash.

Ditto corn on the cob.  Cook it, let it cool, cut it off the cob and put it in freezer bags.

Buy a dozen red, green, yellow peppers and cut them up and freeze them in small quantities.

Go to the nursery or wherever and buy some herbs to pot and take indoors for the fall.

Stake out your apple-picking spot.  Plan a picking date.

Clean out your freezer and defrost it while it's still warm so you'll be ready to cook, bake and freeze this fall.

There's still time to make peach freezer jam while the peaches are very inexpensive.  I saw some Colorado peaches for 99 cents a pound at King Soopers'.

Eat lots of salad with lots of fresh herbs and great tomatoes.

Try a home-made Cobb or a Greek Salad with grilled chicken.

Make gazpacho.

Make caprese salad.

Consider making and freezing tomato sauce.

Blueberries from Canada are still available if you want to freeze some.  Just throw them in the bag unwashed.  (Rinse them when you use them.)

Sing a new song,

Alyce