Millennium Winter Mushroom Cooking Class 2011

If you have never attended a cooking class at Millennium - or even at all - I highly recommend getting behind the counter at Millennium with Chef Eric Tucker for his annual Winter Mushroom Cooking class.  There's usually a pre-class foraging trip in addition to the pre-class Farmer's Market trip.


Winter Mushroom Cooking Class
Sunday January 9, 2011
10am-4pm (ish)
$155/person
Join Eric Tucker for a hands on cooking class in the Millennium kitchen. Spend the second Sunday of the new year creating multiple mushroom filled courses that you will then have the opportunity to sit down and enjoy family style. You will be working with mushrooms that Eric has foraged locally and you will have the opportunity to join Eric for a guided tour through the Ferry Building Farmers' Market on Saturday, January 8 at 10am.
Space is limited, please call Alison for a reservation 415.345.3900x13

A Cooking Course - CHALLENGE!!

For years, I have cursed myself for buying cookbooks and then not ever feeling like I have properly exploited their benefit. I thought about cooking my way through one or two, recipe by recipe for ages and then several years ago came across the book "Julie & Julia" but the sort of "chick lit" bent didn't appeal to me greatly. My friend Cris agrees with me - she also wants to "do" a cookbook. Everyone in food blogs seems to be writing cookbooks - how about cooking your way through a really good one?

I'm planning to tackle "The Millennium Cookbook" and my friend Cris is going to tackle "The Gluten-Free Vegetarian Kitchen" by Donna Kein (212 pages) AND "Recipes for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet" by Raman Prasad (224 pages).

Anyone else interested in this challenge?

Millennium Winter Mushroom Cooking Class

2009 Millennium Winter Mushroom Cooking Class - Here are some photos from the class, I will be posting recipes this weekend:

Fall Farmer's Market Cooking Class at Millennium

Fall Farmer's Market Cooking Class at Millennium
Originally uploaded by jennconspiracy

Photos are up from the Fall Farmer's Market Cooking Class at Millennium - in this photo, Chef Eric Tucker demonstrates how to assemble a rustic galette filled with braised greens.

Fall Harvest Cooking Class at Millennium

Hey folks - check out the Fall Harvest Cooking Class at Millennium. The classes are a lot of fun - I will be there on Sunday and hope to see you there!

Fall Harvest Cooking Class
Sunday November 9th, 2008
10am-3pm (approx), $135/person
With a plentiful Thanksgiving upon us & nary an inspiration for a holiday menu, let chef Eric teach you a few new tricks... Optional opportunity to meet the farmers that provide for Millennium & it's guests: join Eric Saturday November 8th @ the Ferry Building for a guided tour through the Farmer's Market. Gather up your produce for the week & talk about the finishing touches to the class's menu the following day...10am @ the CUESA information booth located in the front of the building, just below the clock tower.

Bubble & Bubble

Last night I went to my third cooking class at the home of Dara Merin of The Sage Table. We went through a comprehensive list of fermented foods and asked questions as she prepared some dhosa (fermented lentils and rice) and potatoes for our dinner. Topics covered included fermented vegetable pickles, kombucha, sourdough, nut yogurts, vinegars and dhosa.

The homemade kombucha was entirely different from what I have had out of a bottle. My first kombucha experience was a bit offputting -- it tasted like apple cider vinegar. Others I have sampled tasted lighter and less like vinegar. Dara told us that when kombucha tastes like vinegar -- it's gone too far in the fermentation process and you should just toss it or let it go to become vinegar. I can't wait to try my hand at kombucha at home!

Nut yogurts sound really intriguing -- I have lots of raw cashews, so I plan to give that a go.

I left the class with starter for kombucha, sourdough and a jar of vegetables to ferment/pickle. I can't wait to do a jar of carrots, cauliflower and hot peppers for my brother -- he's going to love it. I am also going to make my own sauerkraut.

Seems like I need to wait until I get my tomato seedlings out of the kitchen though -- they have microbes in the soil that can get into my fermented cultures. I promise pictures of the tomato seedlings soon!

Millennium - Spring Veggies Cooking Class

Just got home from Millennium for a spring veggies class with Samael7. We were assigned to the "fire" team. We spent all day making incredibly yummy food and eating it. I'll update this post separately about the food and recipes. Check out Albion Cooks blog posting on the class.

Millennium - Winter Mushrooms Cooking Class

COOKING CLASS AT MILLENNIUM: After two mushroom foraging trips, I finally made it to my first cooking class at Millennium. I was worried about being late but I was the first person to arrive! The private dining room was set up with a table, recipe packets and name tags. Everyone had a cook's jacket over her chair. There were 10 people plus Thomas and Allison (from Monday mushroom hunting), Aylene (from Friday mushroom hunting). We got a packet of recipes -- and the the group was split into two to work in 2s and 3s... in my case, my group was comprised of a married couple and a pair of friends so they worked together and Eric has me work on the main parts of the recipes myself. I ended up making the candycap brownie myself, as well as the entire "Soup X" and the Chanterelle Stroganoff. Here's a list of what was on the menu:

• Chanterelle Butter
• Black Chanterelle Pecan (or Walnut) Pate
• Button Mushrooms done right
• Pickled Clamshell and trumpet mushrooms
• Soup X
• Grilled Oyster Mushroom and Kale or Radicchio (or Endive Salad), Truffle Vinaigrette
• Chanterelle Stroganoff
• Candy Cap Blondies (or brownies if you mix the chocolate chips before the stuff cools and melt them)
• Truffled sorbet

The things I really would have wanted to do - I got to do! The soup was really fantastic -- we had a "team meeting" to discuss the direction suggested by Eric and then he tasked them with their button mushrooms and pickled mushrooms and took me to the pantry to collect ingredients for the soup.

Soup X

• 2-3 T olive oil
• 4 stalks of the Devil's Weed (aka celery - ok, it wasn't bad)
• 3-4 smallish (smaller than fist size) yukon gold potatoes, peeled & cubed
• 6-9 parsnips of many colors, peeled and sliced at an angle
• 1 red onion chopped
• 1# black trumpets, cleaned, triple rinsed and chopped
• 1 qt (give or take) of dark mushroom broth
• cumin, allspice, oregano
• 3 dried chiles, toasted, seeded and pulverized -- add half to the soup, reserve half
• pebble beans
• chestnuts
• garlic
• salt
• pepper

Toasted Pumpkin Seed pesto garnish:

• 2 c toasted pumpkin seeds
• 1 bunch flat leaf parsley
• 1 bunch cilantro
• 3 T minced garlic
• pumpkin seed oil
• salt
• pepper

At first, it was peculiar being in the kitchen with so many people. That really threw me at first and made a mistake. When I mixed the ingredients from the double boiler with the dry ingredients for the Candycap blondies and threw in the chocolate chips before the liquids cooled, turning them into brownies (they were still edible). I was pretty disappointed and thought I ruined them and wanted to redo (I really do like blondies!). I think I would use less grapeseed/cocoa butter -- that would lighten them up a bit. I will start using parchment paper more often for those sorts of things -- it works miracles in getting stuff out of a pan.

We made the first several dishes for lunch -- the pate, chanterelle butter, mushrooms, soup and pickled mushrooms. Then we went back to make the stroganoff and the salad. Folks on my team prepped the salad and a biscuit-like crust to go on the stroganoff which I prepared. My stroganoff came out a lot better than the other group -- I actually got my onions carmelized and know how to cook with chanterelles. The other team used too many chanterelles and didn't get enough liquid out, and also did not start early enough or use a big enough pan to carmelize their onions properly. They made cracked black pepper papardelle which came out really amazing and yummy.

And I just have to say - the truffled sorbet and the blondies/brownies were to die for. I just thought I was going to explode from eating so much delicious food. It was utterly unfair that we should have so much yummy food and my friends should not have it.