 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
![Wedding gifts]](../images/side_nav/1_10.gif){kind=small} |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
    |
|||
|
|
||
Extract from: British cuisine was on display By Suzanne R. Stone The best of British cookery came to Aiken for a private lesson Thursday at the home of Gerry Eisenberg. Eisenberg and two other students joined Cressida Chapman of Suffolk’s Kitchen Confidence cooking school for a cooking class. The class was restricted to a maximum of six students for ease of working, according to Chapman. Chapman walked Eisenberg and fellow students Susan Victor and Sue Shannon through the creation of miniature savory cheese souffles, onion and goat cheese tartlets, and Moroccan chicken wrapped in filo dough. “When you make souffles, it’s dead simple,” said Chapman. “You have your base of a white or Bechamel sauce. You want to get the consistency right before you add the egg whites or it won’t hold the rise, and you want to get the seasoning right before you add the egg whites because they’ll dull the taste. The white sauce base you add milk slowly and stir it while it cooks to the consistency of Greek yogurt. Then you take it off the heat, add the egg yolks, the seasoning and the grated cheese.” The base sauce was made with about two tablespoons of butter, two round tablespoons of self-raising flour, a cup of milk and two separated eggs. Some calculation was required to get those figures, as Chapman’s original recipe worked with metrics (25 grams butter, 25 grams flour and 225 millilitres milk in the original). The cheese used was four ounces of white cheddar, though any hard cheese could be used, Chapman said, and seasonings included Dijon mustard, salt and pepper. After tasting, Victor suggested adding a bit of Cayenne pepper as well. Chapman requested a larger bowl and a metal spoon for folding the egg whites into the base. The students watched attentively as she combined the beaten egg whites and sauce, then turned it evenly into ramekins. |
“I love to cook,” said Victor. “I think most people know that about me. Gerry called and said this woman was coming into town from England, and I talked Sue into doing it with me. This is so much fun, because in most classes you’re watching somebody else cook. Because this group is so small, we can focus on techniques.” For the chicken dish, Chapman had five chicken thighs poaching in water, carrots and onions. After letting them stew for 50 minutes, she stripped the meat from the bones and set the cooking liquid aside to use as broth. In a cooking pan on a medium stove, she cooked chopped onion in olive oil, then added two tablespoons turmeric, 1 tablespoon cumin and one tablespoon ground cilantro (coriander). Then she stirred in chopped dried apricots and the chicken meat and cooked them until they absorbed the spices. Last, she had the students ladle enough broth over it to cover the chicken mixture and set it to simmer. Once the liquid absorbed, she stirred in some freshly chopped cilantro (coriander). “At this point you could just stop once it’s absorbed the broth, and serve it over rice or couscous,” Chapman said. “You could do this with lamb or with beef. When you start moving away from ‘recipe,’ that’s where you’re able to use up the stuff that’s in your fridge, because you look at what you’ve got and say, what can I make with this?” In this case, however, Chapman showed the students how to moisten and butter pre-packaged slices of filo dough, make pockets filled with chicken mixture in the large cups of a popover pan (muffin tin), and bake about 20 minutes or until the pastry browns through. “This kitchen smells wonderful,” Eisenberg declared. The class at Eisenberg’s home was the sixth in-home class Chapman had done during her weeklong stay in Aiken. She returns to England Thursday. More information about Chapman’s school is available online at www.kitchenconfidence.info
|
||
©2005 Kitchen Confidence, Hill Farm, Drinkstone, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, United Kingdom IP30 9SY
T 01449 737084 
M 07703 113368 mail@kitchenconfidence.info