Basic Cooking and Knives Skill Class and a Basil & Lemon Chicken Recipe

One of the other classes I recently took at the Boston Center for Adult Education has been the Basic Cooking and Knives Skill class with Chef Lars.  I took a couples cooking class at the Cambridge Culinary Institute with husband M a little while back, but I did not love that particular class (deadlines, did not know where anything was in the kitchen, people running everywhere, etc).  However, I really enjoyed this class at the BCAE.  While I cook almost every night, I have never taken a class in proper knives skills (by the way, it’s pretty funny to tell someone you are going to a knives class and not specify cooking…it sounds like you are trying to learn how to stab someone).  I learned a lot of good new techniques and was able to modify my current way of using a knife to the proper way.  Each night, we made some really delicious food.  I just so happened to have brought my lunch in tupperware containers, so I was able to bring some extra food to an appreciative Husband M each night.

Here is an easy recipe we made on the night we learned how to cut up a whole chicken (something which I have done before, but not properly).  I made this the other night and it was a very easy meal to put together.  This recipe is pretty lax in that you can add or take away ingredients if you have them on hand or not.

Basil and Lemon Chicken:

Ingredients:
-1 whole chicken, cut into pieces
-8 basil leaves (cut chiffonade style …I know how to do this now!)
-3 or 4 green onion, sliced
-juice of 1 lemon
-salt and pepper
-2 cloves garlic, minced
-4 tablespoons olive oil
-1/3 cup white wine

Set the oven to 380 degrees F.  In a roasting pan, mix the basil, spring onions, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and white wine (I just eye-balled most of these measurements as they do not need to be exact…I also had some chopped up Italian parsley on hand so I threw this in).  Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper.  Put chicken into the pan and cover with the marinade.  Roast the chicken for 30-40 minutes based on the pieces (with my oven, it was closer to 45 minutes).  Serve the chicken with the sauce from the pan.  I served the chicken with grilled zucchini and white rice (which nicely soaked up the lemon sauce).

Once I finish my weekly digital photography class, I am thinking about taking Basic Cooking 1,2, and 3 as I learned quite a bit in the class and I imagine could learn a great deal more.

-m

Night School

The other night,  I took a class at the BCAE to help learn Adobe Illustrator.  A couple of weeks ago, I had downloaded a trial run of the Adobe Creative Suite to create digital photopolymer plates to make letterpress prints.  After a few minutes of playing around with Illustrator, I quickly realized I had no idea of what I was doing.  While I pretty much know every Excel trick in the book after 8 years in Corporate Finance, I have never used any type of graphic design program.

After doing a few on-line searches, I realized the least expensive classroom option to learn Illustrator would be at the Boston Center for Adult Education.  In the past, Husband M and I have taken wine classes there.  I also took a beginning sewing class there as well two summers ago.  The facility is pretty close to my work so it’s really easy to take evening classes there.

The class turned out to be just what I needed.  The teacher, who I thought was really funny throughout the class, was really good at going over the basics of Illustrator.  Not surprisingly, she told us at the end of the class that she was a stand-up comedian when she wasn’t doing graphic design.  Her personality really kept the class interesting because three hours of software training can sometimes become boring quickly.  When I had initially been playing around with the software at home, there were a few things that had I had no idea what was going on…I was able to quickly learn what I had been doing wrong and found new tools to help create what I was hoping to.

Overall, I thought the class was definitely worth my time and I plan on utilizing my new skills over the next couple of weeks to design the letterpress plates.  It’s kind of funny how interesting it is to head back to a classroom setting to learn new things once you are no longer in school on a daily basis.  Over the next month, I’m signed up for classes about blogging,  kitchen knives skills, and  digital photography.  I’ll definitely keep you posted on how they go…

-m