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Wednesday, December 17, 2014

10 Rules of etiquette for dining with friends




 “There’s nothing more fulfilling, more than distracts ourselves from ourselves, than simple human company.” – Tristan Fidler

 
Friendship is explored in issue #10 of I am Still in Yesterday’s Clothes. A wonderful little zine that my friend Tristan Fidler has being putting together for the past six years. A theme is chosen for each issue (Parties, Music, Movies etc.) and contributions are sought from friends. So it seems fitting for the tenth and final issue to revolve around the theme of ‘Friendship’.

I read this zine all in the one go, once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. I knew over half the people who had contributed, so it was lovely to read articles about friendship written by friends, and learn about what people do for friends, what makes a good friend, how one would want to kill their friends, the friendzone, all about BFFs and more!

Tristan ends his editorial piece in the zine with “Throughout the featured contributions, I trust something vibes with you about how you see yourself and others as friends”… and it reminded me, and made me think about what an awesome bunch of friends I have. The majority of my friends, people who I have know for many years have been a result of the Perth music scene - people who I met through going to local music gigs, attending the same parties, played in a band with or played on the same line up with and similar minded friends of friends etc. etc. Music has always been and still is my biggest connection with people. In recent years, I have made many new friends through a connection with food as a result of food blogging as the Blue Apocalypse, which has also lead me to plunge into some food related projects/events and connecting with many more awesome food people. 

Music + Food = Life + Friendships

But for me, it’s not about having the same music tastes (ie: you don’t have to listen to metal music) or food tastes (some of my best friends are vegetarians), but the reasons behind the choices made – the way you go about making decisions and the search…the search for something interesting or different, and sticking up for your choices even if they are unpopular.

I’ve never cared too much about the type of music someone likes because I think that what’s more important is why they like it. If you like something because everyone else likes it, it doesn’t really amount to much but if you like something because it has been an active choice, a consideration of factors and an elimination of alternatives. I can respect that, no matter what it is. The same goes for food.

Tell me a story behind your music and food choices, and I will listen with interest.

I contributed a piece to issue #10 of I am Still in Yesterday’s Clothes.
If I was going to write about friendships, it would have to revolve around food of course! 

So here are my 10 Rules of etiquette for dining with friends.

Do you agree/disagree? Let me know what you think :)


10 Rules of etiquette for dining with friends.

1. Respect all the food choices

These days you’re probably faced with friends that have a variety of dietary requirements – vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, nut free, paleo etc. and sometimes it can be hard to swallow “like you don’t eat what?!” But with friends, the food you like to eat should not be a deal breaker. 

2. Don’t preach

Further to the point above, friends should not preach and try converting others to their eating preferences. This does not make for good dinner conversations. 

3. Just eat it

Generally, the polite thing to do is wait for everyone else’s dishes to come out before you start eating your own, but you’re eating with friends not family. It is acceptable to tuck in first.

4. Sharing is caring

The only reason you eat out with friends rather than by yourself is so that you can order more dishes and try different things. Order to share when dining with friends and everyone benefits.

5. Company vs Food

So what’s more important when dining out? The company or the food? I say the company and if you have a bad food experience and your company doesn’t make up for it…well maybe it’s time to find some new friends.

6. Table Manners

Elbows on the table, using the wrong knife or fork is fine in the company of friends. Friends don't judge. But talking when your mouth is full resulting in food spraying across the table is gross. Draw the line at that shit.

7. Look out for each other

Friends look out for each other but telling each other when there is food stuck on their face or between their teeth.

8. Put your phone down

No calling, messaging, tweeting or facebooking on your phone while out with friends. 

There are people in front of you – tell them what’s on your mind!

If you take a photo - #latergram it.

9. Split the bill evenly

When dining out with a group of friends, the law for the bill is to split it evenly at all times, even if it results in your individual bill being one or more drinks over. This is the price paid for having friends.

10. Drinks

While pouring or buying yourself a drink, it is customary to top up everyone else’s glass or ask if they want a drink as well. 

Cheers to friends :)

You can get a copy of I am Still in Yesterday’s Clothes from Etsy.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

TEDxPerth 2014 – Fruit “Seconds”

This year was the third annual TEDxPerth event. 

We moved to a new venue at the Perth Concert Hall, which was almost triple the capacity of last year with 1700, making TEDxPerth the second largest TEDx event in Australia, behind Sydney! I assumed my role as the Food Curator again making sure everyone was fed throughout the day – liaising with the in-house caterer to plan the menu, making sure all dietary requirements were met and working out the logistics for the day. This year I also spread my own idea by providing fruit “seconds” to attendees donated by Newton Orchards of Manjimup to highlight the issue of food waste.

TEDxPerth Fruit "Seconds" Station 

Every year local farmers are left with tonnes of fruit, rejected by supermarkets and consumers for their “substandard” appearance or size.

So TEDxPerth invited attendees to give a bit of love to fruit “seconds” - they don’t look perfect but they are perfectly edible and taste delicious!




It was great to see so many people come to the fruit “seconds” station and the 180kgs of apples and pears gone by the end of the day.

Can you pick out the imperfections?

Many asked what was wrong with the apples and pears as they thought they looked fine and it’s crazy to think any of the fruit would have gone to waste. But when examined more closely, the Pink Lady apples were a little bruised or didn’t grow pink enough this season due to warmer weather conditions and the Goldrush pears had blemishes caused by the pears branches brushing against the ripening fruit in the wind. These fruit were grown on the same orchard and under the same conditions as all other fruit, but due to no fault of their own, their slight imperfections lead to them being considered second rate and farmers having problems selling them. Much of it is given away to foodbanks and school canteens, processed into juice or even used as compost (?!), but a significant proportion goes to waste as there are costs attached to the deposing of fruit “seconds” and farmers just can’t afford it. 


It was interesting to observe people at the fruit “seconds” station naturally start to select the better looking fruit. It’s superficial to judge something by its appearance but it felt like an innate impulse which we are all guilty of. 


What you expect at supermarkets - row upon row of perfect apples.

We also heard stories from people who had worked at supermarkets and were told how they were advised to not put fruit that looked less than perfect on the shelves. Although it is easy to hate on Coles and Woolworths, supermarkets aren't the only ones to blame. Consumers are also equally to blame. Supermarkets respond to what consumers want to buy and people are more inclined to pick out the nice looking fruit so what happens to the rest of it? As a result, supermarkets can demand that farmers supply perfect looking fruit because that’s what sells.

But there have been initiatives in other places to combat and educate about food waste, for example, in France, the supermarket Intermarché stocks Inglorious Fruit and Vegetables in the produce section with a 30% discount. Harris Farm Markets in New South Wales recently started a similar campaign, selling a range of their Imperfect Picks for up to 50% cheaper than the more conventional looking fruit and vegetables. In Portugal, Isabel Soares started Fruita Feia, a cooperative that sources ugly fruit from local farmers and sells them to registered customers. Her story was presented at the recent MAD talks.

Wouldn’t it be great if supermarkets here put fruit “seconds” on their shelves as well their perfect counterparts? So consumers can be aware of the existence of fruit that comes in all shapes and sizes, imperfections and all, and have the choice of buying them if they wanted too and can enjoy fruit as nature intended. We are so often shield from the reality of our food that we undervalue it - with meat carefully portioned and packaged up so you wouldn’t know it actually came from an animal, and fruit and vegetables so pristine that kids growing up these days must think that all carrots/cucumbers are perfectly straight and apples are so shiny you can see your reflection in it! It’s not right or sustainable.


[Update 4.12.14 - so I published this post yesterday and a day later Woolworths announce that they are starting an Odd Bunch campaign - selling ugly fruits and vegetables at discount prices in their stores. Change is happening. Please embrace it!]

People would ask us what we were going to do about fruit waste? 


Well... TEDxPerth is a not-for-profit organisation run by volunteers and we spend months planning the TEDxPerth annual events united by the belief that sharing great ideas can challenge our views and attitudes to create change. What I hope people will take away from their experience at TEDxPerth is to think about their purchasing decisions more carefully and the way they view fruit - it doesn’t all look the same, it doesn’t all look perfect (so stop picking out all the perfect ones all the time!), and maybe our actions can drive the change in what supermarkets will stock and we can all contribute in some way to reducing food waste.

It has always been, and still is, up to the consumer to put their money where their mouth is.

Farmers markets are places where you can access more variations of fruit but if you are shopping at the supermarket or green grocer – ask questions! Where does their fruit come from? What happens to the fruit waste? Let them know you’d be happy to buy imperfect fruit!

(Special thanks to Niamh who spent the day manning the fruit “seconds” station with me during the breaks, we made an effort to talk to everyone to engage them in a conversation about fruit waste.)


Someone said to me that I seemed really passionate about this issue and I told them it was something that has developed over time.... because when I started getting into cooking, I started to care about what goes into my body, so I like to cook from scratch to reduce the amount of processed food I eat as I only want the good stuff! When you care about the food that goes into your body, you start to build a relationship with it. You want to know more about where it comes from, what it's made of, you learn about and connect with the people who produce your food. 

People who work in the food industry are some of the hardest workers I know and the fruits of their labour should never go to waste.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Deconstructed Wonton Stir Fry


When ‘deconstructed’ is used in the context of food...it usually means disaster

On a reality cooking show when someone has stuffed up their dish (usually a dessert), it’s turned around by calling it some sort of ‘deconstructed dish’, and suddenly it’s a masterpiece! But wouldn’t you just prefer it as the whole damn thing, as it was meant to be? Enough with the blobs and scattering of things on the plate!


Is there anything wrong with deconstructed food? It feels unnecessary sometimes or lazy….or maybe people are just having some fun with their food and doing something a bit different. Stuff the conventions!


So I went there. I went stuff this, I’m going all deconstructed on wontons! 


I love wontons! Who doesn’t? Wontons are made up of two components - first and most importantly I think is the filling which has to stand up on its own. I always cook a bit of the filling mixture and taste it first to make sure it’s alright before wrapping it up.  Then there are the wonton wrappers/skins which I always have leftovers of, maybe this has to do with my tendency to stuff as much filling as I can into each individual wonton so there is never enough filling to go around. But I love the smooth and silky feel of wonton wrappers, so I like to cook them on their own to add to my bowl of wonton soup and it floats around free from filling.  


I love all the parts of the wonton that make it a whole. But what if I have wontons without it being a wonton and just chuck all the components together into a stir fry? It would be a quick meal fix, and remove the need for hours of diligently filling and pleating individual wontons because who has time for that everyday? 


So I made a wonton stir fry the other day. I stir fried the filling and then boiled the wrappers and chucked them into the wok as well. I deconstructed the wonton, it’s all inside out! It sounds and feels wrong, but it tastes right.



Deconstructed Wonton Stir Fry

(An original recipe by the Blue Apocalypse)

Ingredients

•    peanut oil
•    ~ 200g wonton skins/wrappers
•    150g pork mince
•    10 prawns, shelled and deveined, finely diced
•    1 minced garlic clove
•    1 teaspoon grated ginger
•    ½ cup chestnuts, finely diced
•    ½ cup flat leaf garlic chives, chopped 2-3cm lengths
•    1 teaspoon fish sauce
•    1 teaspoon light soy sauce
•    2 teaspoons oyster sauce
•    ½ teaspoon sesame oil
•    2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine
•    1 cup chicken stock (heated in microwave to warm up)
•    pinch salt and white pepper


 I use canned water chestnuts
 flat leaf garlic chives

Method


Bring to boil a large pot of salted water.


Slice the wonton skins in half diagonally and separate them so they don’t stick together. 


Heat 3-4 tablespoons peanut oil in a wok, add the garlic and ginger and fry until aromatic. 


Add the pork mince and fry until it starts to turn brown. Add the chestnuts and fry for 30 seconds. Add the prawns and fry until it starts to turn pink. Then add the seasonings to taste – fish sauce, light soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, salt and white pepper.


While you are cooking the meat, prepare the wonton skins by cooking them in the large pot of salted water for ~ 2-3 minutes until they are al dente. When you add the wonton skins to the pot, use chopsticks to swish them around so that they don’t stick together as they cook. Remove the wonton skins from the pot with a slotted spoon to a colander to drain. NB: Depending on how big your pot is, you may have to cook the wonton skins in batches because you don’t want too many in the pot at once as they stick together. 


Add the cooked wonton skins to the wok and gently toss together with the meat. Add the chicken stock and toss everything together a few more times. 


Serve. 

Recommended - douse with chilli

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Cornflake Crunch Almond Honey Slice


I used a cleaver to slice my slice...

In recent months, I have discovered Momofuku’s Cornflake Crunch.
 
It has also been a dangerous discovery as I can’t get enough of it.


It’s such a simple idea – take cornflakes, mix it with some milk powder, sugar, a bit of salt and melted butter, and bake slowly in the oven at a low temperature until its all toasty, buttery and crunchy. But the transformation to the cornflakes is phenomenal and addictive.

Momofuku’s Cornflake Crunch was originally created to accompany their Cereal Milk Panna Cotta. Cereal Milk is one of the things Momofuku is best known for and in their cookbook it describes it as something that “seems almost dumb”, as it’s just cornflakes steeped in milk giving it the flavour that everyone knows, it’s what’s leftover after you eat a bowl of cereal – the dense, tasty, slightly sweet, starchy, corny milk left on the bottom of your cereal bowl. Bringing back nostalgic childhood memories!

Another childhood memory I have of cereal is Honey Joys which are another simple little treat, where cornflakes are combined with honey, sugar, butter and then baked in patty cases in the oven.

 Momofuku Chocolate Chip Cornflake Marshmallow Cookies

Honey Joys were something that I thought of when I made the Momofuku Cornflake Crunch for the first time as a component of the Momofuku Chocolate Chip Cornflake Marshmallow Cookies. I wondered if it would be appropriate to make Honey Joys using Momofuku’s Cornflake Crunch for something a bit more next level but I felt I could do better, so I made this instead – Cornflake Crunch Honey Almond Slice.

The reaction to these are always positive and I also get a lot of comments on the cornflakes, like “what’s in them?”…. “there is something in these cornflakes that I can’t explain but it tastes amazing”... it’s that unexplained taste that makes everything better, kind of like MSG!

Milk powder is used a lot in Momofuku baked treats and Christina Tosi has likened it to MSG for the pastry world. Milk powder has the ability to enhance and provide a great depth of flavour in baked goods. Milk powder is the magic ingredient in Momofuku’s Cornflake Crunch.

So here is my adults version of Honey Joys with Momofuku Cornflake Crunch as a slice with flaked almonds. I think flaked almonds automatically make a dessert look fancy. When you see flaked almonds on a cake, you know it’s not just an average cake. This is not an average slice.

Recipe for Momofuku’s Cornflake Crunch is available on their website and summarised here -->  Preheat oven to ~130C and in a large bowl, combine 170g of cornflakes (crush them a bit first) with 40g milk powder, 40g caster sugar, 4g salt and 130g melted butter. Toss everything thoroughly together and the butter will bind the dry ingredients to the cereal, forming small clusters. Spread the cornflake clusters onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and bake for 20 minutes until toasted. Cool the cornflake crunch completely before using!


Cornflake Crunch Almond Honey Slice

(Inspired by Momofuku’s Cornflake Crunch and Honey Joys. The basis for the almond slice recipe was adapted from the Slices to Savour article by Matt Preston that I had made before and enjoyed so I changed it to include cornflake crunch)

Ingredients

Base

  • 90g melted butter
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 120g brown sugar
  • 145g plain flour
  • 70g almond meal (ground almonds)

Topping
Method

Preheat oven to 170C. 

Combine the base ingredients together and press into the bottom of a 20cm x 20cm baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. Bake for 12 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and leave to cool. 

While the base is cooling, make the topping – combine the butter and honey in a small saucepan and stir over med-low heat until the butter is melted. Simmer, uncovered for about 3 minutes or until the mixture is a light caramel colour. Turn off the heat, add the almond flakes and cornflake crunch into the saucepan, and stir to combine everything together.

Spread the topping on the base and put it back into the oven to bake for another 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.

Cool and then slice!

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Pasta, Risotto and Gnocchi Masterclass with Joel Valvasori of Lallarookh in Balingup



A Pasta, Risotto and Gnocchi Masterclass with Joel Valvasori, head chef of Lallarookh and one of Perth’s best chefs sounds pretty cool, right? But the class was not going to be held in Perth. Instead, it was going to be far away from the city, down south in the serene small country town of Balingup. It was also going to be an intimate class of just 20 in the quaint Balingup Town Hall which has been around since the late 19th century. Now that sounds pretty special! It almost sounds too good to be true, but Katrina Lane of Taste of Balingup organised such a class a few weeks ago on the 27th of September. 


I’m a big fan of Lallarookh, it’s the place I recommend to people if they want to eat some real Italian food in Perth. So the opportunity to learn the secrets to the dishes and try cooking them at home didn’t require too much further convincing and I booked myself in.

 Katrina Lane checking off cooking class participants

“NO RECIPES!” 

A great way to start a Masterclass, right? The startled look on some people’s faces when Joel told us this, I even heard a few jokingly but maybe semi-seriously demand a refund… 


You expect to take away recipes from a cooking class so you can try cooking the dishes you learnt at home. I've never come away from a class without recipes.


But do we really learn “how” to cook from recipes? 


Instead of recipes, Joel provided us with ideas and processes throughout the class so that we understood “how” a dish was done, and then we could experiment at home with trial and error. This is what cooking is about, right?


 “I can teach you how to cook. The rest you learn yourself. That’s how I learnt from my Nonna.”

And I realised that’s how I learnt to cook too.

I’ve learnt to cook from my parents and I know that any attempt to squeeze a recipe out of them is futile. All I’m ever really told is, a little bit of this and a little bit of that goes into a dish, never any quantities as I should just keep adding and tasting until it’s right. I would learn the steps by watching over my mum or dad’s shoulder in the kitchen and scribbling down what they do in my notebook, and then try to replicate it. 

 “Cooking is a manual act.”

Watching someone cook is going to give you a better feel for making a dish than just reading a recipe, and it's not a matter of if you have the quantity of ingredients down to the exact gram and every step timed to the second, but using all your senses – sight, touch, smell, taste to guide you along the way to bring a dish to fruition. Cooking is something that should be intuitive.

Joel told us all his dishes stem from the same ideas and processes, there is a common theme throughout, so everything in the meal goes together. This became evident throughout the class as he showed us how to cook sugo di carne, risotto, pasta and gnocchi, where all the dishes had the same basis and understanding how one dish came together meant that you could easily cook another dish.

Joel’s food is based on his family’s Friuli heritage in Italy’s northeast. He’s big on regional cooking because Italy is too big of a country to just have one style of food and if you eat regional, it’s more likely to have an authentic touch to it. 

The class began with the cooking of sugo di carne so it could slowly simmer away for the rest of the class. The sugo di carne was the dish I wanted to learn how to cook the most, as the pappadelle with sugo di carne at Lallarookh is one of my favourite dishes to order.  One thing I have noticed about the pasta dishes at Lallarookh is that there is a small amount of sauce provided, just enough to cover and wrap around the pasta. My usual experience at an Italian restaurant is to have pasta that is drowning in sauce, but more sauce does not mean better, although this is probably the general expectation. I’ve come to appreciate the delicate balance of sauce on Lallarookh’s pasta dishes which allows the pasta itself to shine but flavour is never compromised, and I've always wondered how they get so much flavour in their sauce when sometimes it feels like it’s barely there.


So what’s the secret? I think the answer is fat. About half a litre of oil (blend of canola with dash of olive oil) was used in cooking the sugo and a chunk of butter was also added in towards the end! The maximum amount of oil/butter I have ever used in my home cooked pasta sauces is about 4 tablespoons. Joel likes to cook with a decent amount of oil and his rule is that you should always add more and then take it off at the end if it’s too much, but I don’t think there is such a thing as too much… fat is favour after all. So the ingredients in the sauce are basically confitting and when it’s added to pasta, it kind of forms an emulsion that lubricates the pasta which is really nice on the palate. 

All the ingredients are gradually added in the pot. Starting with a mirepoix of garlic, onion and herbs (sage/rosemary), then celery and carrot was added in.  Some red wine was cooked off before a mixture of pork and beef mince went in. I’ve always browned and sealed the mince in my pasta sauces as I though it would taste better because of the Maillard reaction. But Joel told us that you shouldn’t brown and seal the meat as you want to encourage the juice in the meat to come out and flavour the sauce as it cooks. The sugo was cooked for a long time so all the ingredients become a unified rich flavour and you can’t really discern the individual elements.

The sugo contained the defining flavours of Joel’s Friulian-style of cooking – cinnamon and rosemary. Plus a little bit of chilli powder for a touch of flavour and heat. Another characteristic of Northern Italian cooking is that not much pepper is used. But salt is important and was added throughout, at different stages of the cooking process. Joel advised us to use the best salt you can get and his own pursuit led to Olsson’s sea salt.

I asked about the use of tomato paste in cooking sauces as it’s a feature of practically every pasta sauce recipe I have come across. Joel told us he never uses tomato paste, a good passata is all you need and he recommended the Passata Di Pomodoro imported by Roberto Imports in South Perth which you can find on the shelves of Scutti in South Perth or the North Perth Growers Market. The use of tomato paste means some liquid (water/stock) needs to be added to lengthen the sauce.


The class also changed my understanding of how to cook certain dishes, especially risotto, which we learnt to cook in a way that was the opposite to how I have cooked it in the past. Cooking risotto is a timed process where Joel cooks his risotto for exactly 17 minutes, plus 2 minutes of toasting the rice. It’s his go to dish when he wants to cook something quick and easy for dinner.  A two pot process was used with one ‘flavour’ pot for the aromatics and vegetables, and the ‘risotto’ pot for the rice. In the flavour pot, Joel cooked some garlic, onions, bay leaves and asparagus, leaving it to stew for a bit. In the risotto pot he toasted the rice and then added in the stock and flavour base of vegetables. The stock was added in all at the beginning and left alone to simmer, there are no ladles of stock gradually added and constant stirring. The rice was occasionally checked and moved around with a spoon but not stirred. Reason being that when you toast the rice it develops a protective layer and if you are constantly stirring the rice it looses this protective shell, and a characteristic of perfect risotto is the rice grains are still separate and it hasn’t turned into mush. Another key element was keeping the temperature constant so only hot liquid was used and there was no wine involved. My risottos are generally a labour of love, where I can spend up to 45 minutes cooking it and standing in front of the stove the whole time to keep adding in stock and stirring. This was a risotto that I didn’t need to attend to much, so I could be cooking many things at once. The result was a beautiful creamy consistency with the rice grains still intact and it tasted damn good! 


We were also shown how to make the pasta Joel uses at Lallarookh. A pasta that should not be attempted at home because it’s so tough it would break your pasta machine. A lot of elbow grease was required to knead the dough and multiple participants took on the challenge as it was tiring work! At the final stages of rolling out it was amazing to see how leathery the pasta sheets were and I understood why the pasta at Lallarookh has such a nice bite to it. 

Kneading pasta = hard work....(well for some people) 

Joel didn’t give away too much information about his pasta, after all it’s his bread and butter, but he showed us the process and told us that to make pasta at home - start with some egg yolks (yolks are mainly used as the white produces a softer dough) and then gradually add in flour until it can't take it anymore and a smooth dough is formed.

Joel stressed the importance of taking the time to make the pasta dough using your hands so that you develop an appreciation for it and will look after it leading to a better end result. The more work you put into the dough at the beginning, the less work you will have to put into it later. This care and attention to cooking is an ideal that Joel instils in his chefs because (paraphrased quote) “chefs come from low stock, falling into the job out of necessity”. It’s something that I hear a lot about chefs. Considering the long work hours and unsociable nature of being a chef, it wouldn’t exactly be the first choice of career for most!


Lastly, we all got hands on and made our own batch of ricotta gnocchi which was much easier and quicker than making potato gnocchi. With 400g of ricotta, a little parmesan, salt and a pile of flour, we each mixed and kneaded flour into a dough until we got the right texture, and then rolled it out into thick sausages and sliced to form little pillows of gnocchi.

The photos above of me rolling my gnocchi dough are taken

 My ricotta gnocchi - not bad for a first timer?

During the class we were treated to some Barton Jones Red Rhapsody. It's a light red shiraz style wine that is perfect for summer drinking when you want to drink red but don’t want something too heavy. It was a lovely drink and easy to drink a lot of. I definitely had a few glasses of it throughout the night….and while I drunk as the class came to an end, many people went up to Joel with questions, probably asking for recipes (!)…. nah probably just trying to understand how to be a better cook. 

I can’t remember what prompted the response but I remember Joel saying while he was answering a question - “Difference is I’ve committed my life to it.”  

Cooking is a commitment!

It’s not something that you learn right off the bat. 

And I’m committing myself to using the notes that I took in the class to try to recreate some of the dishes Joel showed us how to cook. This might take some time, trial and error, as I try to work things out without a recipe. But after taking the class, I wouldn’t want it any other way.