During a Rotary event, we discovered that a Rotarian couple gets together with some friends & family every 2 weeks to take a cooking class.  The class is held in a small event hall on Thursday nights and there are usually 10-14 people that attend.  It is privately organized so all the attendees know each other or have a common connection.   We were invited to join the group to try it out and of course we accepted!  It was definitely up our alley and it was a great opportunity to learn new food words. 

Because it was our first time at the class, we allowed to pick between two options:  Low Calorie Cooking (yeah right!) or Mexican Fusion (oh yeah!).  So, of course we picked Mexican Fusion—low calorie cooking can wait for another class. 

We arrived at 7:30 and received the menu for the night: 

Pork Loin with apple & hazelnut stuffing cooked in beer

Crab Salad

Chiles Rellenos (filled with cream cheese & pecans)

Strawberry tarts filled with cream cheese & pecans topped with a Strawberry pink peppercorn sauce

As we were the first people to arrive we got to pick which part of the meal we would prepare.  Don and I decided that making the chiles would be the more interesting part (I’m allergic to beer so the pork didn’t interest me and Don is allergic to shellfish so the salad didn’t interest him).  Once everyone arrived, we got down to work.  First we had to roast the chiles so that we could take the skin off.  Of course, we all know Don: if there is a fire, he’s right there: 

Don Cooking

After we roasted the chiles we had to take the skins off, open them up and pull out the seeds and veins (where 90% of the heat from the chile is).  Then we stuffed them with a mixture of cream cheese, chopped pecans and an egg white.  After that we had to roll out some puff pastry dough and wrap the chiles in the pastry.  We then brushed it with egg yolk and stuck it in the oven for 20 minutes until the pastry was cooked and the filling was warm.  We also had to make a tomato salsa to go with the chiles. 

While we were doing this, others were preparing the salad, dessert and pork.  There was a lot going on in the kitchen:

Cooking Group

The folks on the left are skinning hazelnuts (which they said was the WORST JOB EVER!), others were chopping jicama for the salad and the back of the photo, they are preparing the dessert.  Chef Gloria is to the right of the photo, just beside me. You can see our lovely skinned chiles at the bottom of the photo.  Chef Gloria goes from station to station checking to see how things are going and helping out where necessary. 

After a few hours of cooking, everything was ready and we could sit down and enjoy the fruits of our labour:

Dinner 

Here is our tasty dinner.  Our chiles are on the bottom left of the photo, next to some fried spaghetti nests that go with the salad.  Next to that are the strawberry tarts.  Above that is the crab salad, more chiles and in the centre of the photo, the pork roast.  Everything turned out really well, but I must say the chiles were super tasty and probably the best thing we ate that night!  They were very rich because of the combination of cream cheese, nuts and puff pastry.  I wanted to eat more, but I just couldn’t.  Lucky for us, there were leftovers and we brought the two extra chiles home! 

At the end of the night we decide on the menu for the next class and this time it is going to be Italian food.  It’s not really my favourite cuisine, but more importantly, it’s a night out to practice Spanish, have good food and enjoy good company.  Stay tuned, more cooking class posts are coming!