We Took A Cooking Class

Bev saw an ad in the newspaper for a class in Northern Italian Cooking put on by Knoxville restaurant owner and Certified Executive Chef – one of only three in town – Deron Little.  The class was held at the newly opened Sequoyah Grill and was co-taught by the restaurant’s executive chef, Kirk Emery – Deron cooks at Season’s Café, his other restaurant.  We’d eaten at Season’s but this was our first trip to Sequoyah.

After a background introduction, Deron opened the session with a brief discussion of food safety and knives.  The class was a nice combination of technique, cooking background info, history, and recipes.  They chose Northern Italian for this course as it is Kirk’s food passion, even though he’s never been there, but he did spend several years at a highly rated Italian restaurant in DC learning from their executive chef. 

Then they prepared dishes, providing lots of info as they did and we were served the same dishes that had been prepared by the kitchen.

French trained chef Deron, prepared the appetizer course of Chicken Saltimbocca Ballotine on a Roma Tomato Garlic & Basil Coulis (sauce).  He showed how to pound the chicken, roll it in plastic to make the ballotine – I’d never heard of them either - and then how to cook and plate it. He made the coulis (also, never heard this word) while it was cooking.  This was the one I was served and looked just like his.

The entrée was Risotto topped with sautéed scallops, shrimp, and spinach.  Since making my first ever risotto on Lemon Night and not knowing how it was supposed to be when done, this was particular interesting to me.  Kirk said he made thousands of dishes of it while working in DC and he described the how’s and why’s and then he walked around the room to show us how to tell when the scallops were ready to flip without lifting them up. 

The texture of my risotto, using Pam’s recipe on Lemon Night, was pretty much the same as his and I discovered the reason for adding the liquid in smaller batches is primarily to prevent getting too much.

The dessert was Tiramisu and Bev thought it was excellent – she’s a big fan.  Kirk walked us through the entire process with particular emphasis on making the egg custard without ending up with scrambled eggs.

Here's a nugget - According to Chef Kirk, it gets better with age, so make it at least a day before.

We were both glad we attended because we picked up some nuggets of knowledge from good presenters, ate a delicious three course meal, and found a new restaurant.  We hope to attend the next class they offer is March.  I’ll post the recipes for these dishes if we make any of them.

All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

One year ago: Great Burgers

Two years ago: Chili Pie On A Rainy Day

Larry

1/27/2012 meal date