voila!

I took another French cooking class at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts called “Voila!”. I was thrilled to find out that Scott would be our instructor (he was one of the instructors at the last class I took) and it was even more fun because my friend, Stephanie, took the class with me.

There were only 9 of us in this one, and we made 7 dishes: Warm Crab Tartlets; Chilled Cream of Zucchini Soup with Mussels and Fresh Mint; Seared Marinated Tuna with Black Olive Vinaigrette; Potato Puree; Duck Breasts with Coriander, Endive, and Sweet and Sour Orange Sauce; Confit of Fresh Chestnuts, Walnuts, Fennel, and Onions; and Crepes Suzette.

I took on the potato puree dish even though Scott warned us that it was labor intensive. I thought, “How can this be hard?” Aside from the usual peeling and cubing, we used a large food processor to mash six cooked potatoes with some milk and butter. Make that a cuppa butta. Then after that, we still had to thin it out a bit more with some light cream. Then Scott had me press it through a food mill to get out the larger “particles” (i.e. bits of potato skin). Yikes! I’ve never had creamier and smoother potatoes in my life (“as smooth as a baby’s butt” as one woman put it – lol)!

Stephanie decided to tackle the zucchini soup recipe. While the potatoes were cooking, I helped her by cleaning two large bags of mussels, which included de-bearding some of them. It was kind of weird watching them close up and knowing that they were alive.

I couldn’t eat any of the dishes except for my potatoes because of my food allergies, so I took my portions home in Tupperware containers for Tony to enjoy. Everything looked great though, and the kitchen smelled so good. Oh wait, I did grab some of the cooked tuna that didn’t fit onto the serving platter and that was yummy.