Cooking Classes

I love taking cooking classes not only because I love learning new things and getting inspiration, but also because it is a great way to socialize and be together with people! So I have attended my fair share of cooking classes over the years, and I have found this to be true, the test of a real good cooking class is this:

Are you going to cook the recipes again?
Are you able to extract learning from it and use it in other contexts?

BBQ - The Australian lie!

Now I believe we all - or at the very least most of us - have misconceptions about other countries. There are a trillion different reasons for this and Hollywood is probably one of the major ones! I shall be the first to admit that I had many misconceptions about Australia, before coming here! And so I'll tell you of a two of mine:

- Australian men can be divided into two sub classes:
Surfer dudes and Crocodile Dundee types, both of them hot as!
- Every Australian loves to BBQ and they are all masters of the art!

Now one is as untrue as the other and so I have sadly had to revise both! Now I love barbequing and as I realised there was no way I´d learn by watching the Aussie male (it seams to be internationally accepted that the BBQ is male territory, unless there are lesbians around) I decided to take classes!

The first thing I did was search the internet and ask my friends where to go. There seam to be general consensus in Sydney that if one is to learn how to cook fish, you have to attend classes held at the Sydney Fish Market (www.sydneyfishmarked.com.au). This sounded reasonable and so I decided to take the chance and pay the rather steep fee of 100 dollars for a class in seafood BBQ. On the day of the class I showed up, all excited and ready to learn. To my great surprise, the class was very different from how a class is conducted back home! Here you start out in a classroom, watching a celebrity chef cook the recipes while explaining how it is done and telling you of all the little tricks, very much like a live interactive edition of a TV cooking show! After this you move to the "hands on" part of the class, where you do the actual cooking. Lo and behold, little elves have magically prepared everything in little dishes so most things are measured up and ready to use, again very much like a TV cooking show! So you just have to cook and eat. While you eat, the little elves return to do the cleaning too. No wonder the classes are expensive - that kind of magic does not come cheap, I'm sure! After the class you are given a bag of what I assume are sponsored gifts, such as soy sauce, fish stock, Glad wrap and a few other things I don´t quite remember. At the end of the day a fun experience, but not very good value for the money! Now after this, I decided to take a class in meat BBQ @ the bar-be school, www.bar-beschool.com.au, and what a difference! The atmosphere was festive though relaxed, the guys down to earth and the whole group in a friendly and very "lets-have-fun-kind-of-mood". Again the chefs started out explaining and showing how things were to be done, while answering questions and making sure that we - as beholds a proper BBQ - had a beer or a bottle of water in hand! In clear and no uncertain terms, dispensing advice and good humour! After each skill or course was explained, there was a chance to try most of it out "hands on", before we moved on to the next part! I accept that it takes a lot of room and time if everyone is to try everything, but a little more hand-on time would not have been a bad thing. They did however make up for this, by explaining everything so well that I'm confident I can use the skills anyway! Also they did seem to assume that everyone uses gas and so they did not seem to know much about charcoal barbecues. It was however a great class and I can only recommend it, because let´s be honest, the world has seen burnt and abused meat enough! Or, as my friend Kim might have put it: there is mediocrity enough in this world, without our help. So guys get over yourself and take a class!

The following recipes are my adaptation of recipes given to me at the BBQ school and so while I want to give them credit, I also want to make it clear that the notes and comments are mine and may not reflect their opinions unless stated!

Whole BBQ roasted leg of lamb

1 leg of lamb
Rosemary
Salt, pepper
Garlic
Olive oil

Method:

1. Preheat the BBQ until it is as hot as you can get it (Weber recommends using indirect placement of the coals in a charcoal BBQ).

2. Make about 6 incisions or holes in the leg on the top site (never on the side that will be facing down, as it will only make juices drain out of the roast). Each incision is to be about 3 cm deep, there by letting you shove a clove of garlic and some rosemary down each hole.

3. Rub the leg in olive oil, salt and pepper all over, don’t be shy with the salt and pepper!

4. Place the leg of lamb on a roast holder, which is a sort of spit with two tooth’s which allows the leg to be suspended mid air, this means the leg gets a more even cooking as it allows air to circulate all around it! Place a pan under the roast to catch the drippings. If you don’t have a roast holder, don’t despair, but place it directly in the pan. The pan serves the dual purpose of minimising the cleaning and preserving the juice for a sauce! You might fill the pan with root vegetables, which will give you a perfect dish to serve with your roast.

5. (If you use a gas BBQ, turn the middle burners off and leave only the left and right burners on aiming for a temperature of 200 degrees celcious). The high starting temperature will close the pores just like you might do with a stake on a pan.

6. Baste the roast with a marinade after 30 minutes, making sure not to add too much oil to the BBQ. If you want to add red wine to the dripping pan so as to get the wine flavour on the meet, do this 30 minutes before the end of the cooking so as not to make it dry out, which might lead to black and carcinogenic smoke!

7. Cooking time is determined by weight of the lamb – this goes for any roast! 30 minutes pr. kg., Ben – the chef @ BBQ school stakes his reputation on this being the perfect timing providing you do not open the lid except once to baste the roast! If you open the lid of the BBQ during cooking, to check on it, you will be letting out heat! So don’t, in cooking as in life, trust the process! If need be, you can use a BBQ thermometer, which should show a 71 degrees celcious for a nice pink steak! You can get really cool thermometers, which are wirelessly connected to a base station so that you can see the temperature, from afar, with out lifting the lid!

8. As with all meat, let it rest! The meat can easily wait for the rest of your cooking, but the rest can’t wait for the meat! Letting the meat rest 15-30 minutes will make the juices stay in the meat. Also as Ben explained, meat is a muscle and cooking it makes it tense up, resting it after the cooking makes it relax again and thereby make it more tender!

Tips on buying leg of lamb:
- the boys @ BBQ school recommends something called an easy carve cut, which is basically a de-boned leg of lamb, where the last bit of bone is left in. this serves many purposes, these are in no particular order:

– It gives you a handle to hold on to while carving.

– You can carve it without having to work your way around a bone (there for the name!) and you can easily cut against the grain, there by making sure the meat does not go tough!

– It gives you a natural room, where the bone used to be, which you might fill with spices.

– The leftover bit of bone will give of good flavour from the bone marrow!



Easy BBQ Beef Kebabs

Ingredients

1 kg Beef mince – lean!
1 cup Breadcrumbs
2 Eggs
½ cup Chopped parsley, coriander and mint
½ cup Chopped onion
2 cloves Garlic
2 Chillies (birds eye), chopped & deseeded
1 teaspoon Mustard
½ teaspoon Cumin
½ teaspoon Paprika
salt & pepper

Method:

1. Pre-heat BBQ for 20 minutes, full power!

2. Combine all ingredients in a big bowl. (The eggs serve the purpose of making the mixture stick together and give it a good texture).

3. Season and taste mix to make sure you are happy with the taste.

4. Mould the mixture in your hand to a oval sausage like shape. Making sure to not make the kebab too big as it is hard to control and easily falls off the stick if it is too heavy!

5. Stick it unto the end of a skewer. If the skewer is wooden, make sure to soak it in water for a few minutes beforehand. This insures you against splinters and burning skewers!

6. Roll the kebab lightly in some breadcrumbs.

7. Grill the skewer equally on all sights. Securing and even cooing by turning every 2 minutes or so, giving it a total of about 6 minutes.

8. Serve with Tatziki or a spicy tomato & coriander dipping sauce.

9. Bon appetite



Spicy tomato & coriander dipping sauce

Ingredients:

10 ml Olive Oil
1 clove Garlic
2 Chillies (birds eye), chopped & deseeded
½ Onion, finely diced
8 Sun dried tomatoes
6 Ripe tomatoes
¼ bunch Coriander, chopped
20g Sugar

Method:

1. In small pot, lightly cook the onions, garlic and chilli, without colouring it.

2. Cut tomatoes and sun dried tomatoes and add to food processor – blend till they are just a bit chunky. Add to pot.

3. Cook out on medium heat till consistency gets to that of a coating consistency – about 15 minutes.

4. Add sugar, salt and pepper. Taste.

5. Add coriander and cook for a further 5 minutes

6. Bon appetite!