Wickedfood Cooking School, SUNNINGHILL

Information & bookings (011) 234-3252 sunninghill@wickedfood.co.za

Hi all,

We had a great response to our survey, thank you to all of you who filled it in, and congratulations to Hannelie Swanepoel who won the fantastic prize, a Cooking class for two for a Month. We have taken note of your comments and will be implementing many of your suggestions answer from next newsletter.  The most important one being that the majority of you wanted a newsletter every alternate week.

Find us on Facebook and Twitter – just search for Wickedfood and you will find us. We update the blog on a daily basis and publish it through Facebook and Twitter.

Wickedfood Cooking School news

Our March individual cooking class programmes are up on the internet – click the relevant month for the programme March and April.

Wickedfood Cooking School runs classes with a minimum of 8 participants and a maximum of 12 as this gives everyone hands-on experience  and keeps the class small enough for maximum learning.

• Sunday 14 March at 4pm – Easy to prepare Indian dishes (R350pp). An Indian cooking class, exploring authentic easy Indian dishes including potato patties; tandoori chicken; pumpkin cream curry; pulao and sago pudding.
• Monday 15 March at 6pm – Classic Italian dishes (R380pp). Italian cooking class, preparing 6 hearty dishes including chicken liver crostinis; zucchini frittata; pasta with a clam sauce; Osso Buca; polenta and pannacotta.
• Monday 22 March at 6pm – Thai master class (R350pp). In this Thai cooking class dishes include Fried springrolls, Chaing Mai noodle curry chicken, Green pawpaw salad, and Crispy red water chestnuts.
• Sunday 28 March at 4pm – Making flavoured pasta, shapes and sauces (R380pp). Adding flavour to pasta, dishes including pepper fettuccini with an Alfredo sauce, chilli tagliatelle with a seafood cream, beef filled spinach ravioli and fried sweet pasta with grappa.

Please contact the school should you wish to make a booking:

Looking for info on food?

If you have any  food-related question, or a dish that you just can’t get right or even a certain recipe that you are looking for, but just can’t seem to find, then contact us and we will do our best to answer it as soon as possible. Click Here for more information. Hope to hear from you soon.

Cookbook of the week

The UK may have their Mrs Beeton, and the USA Julia Child, but we have Mrs SJA De Villiers, author of Cook and Enjoy. This enlightening cookbook is the bible to many South African cooks. . … Click Here for more.

Click Here to see Wickedfood Cooking School’s top 10 food-related books for 2009.

Did you know:

In the Middle Ages, the word plum was used to describe dried fruits in general. For this reason, Christmas pudding is still also known as plum pudding. When Little Jack Horner pulled a plum from his mouth in the 16th century nursery rhyme, he probably pulled out a raisin, according to Alan Davidson’s Oxford Companion to Food.

Food quote of the week:

“Unemployment is capitalism’s way of getting you to plant a garden.” – Orson Scott Card, American author

Recipe of the week:

Cheese soufflé

A soufflé can be a fairly tricky dish to master. At Wickedfood cooking school, we make a delicious one in our French cooking class. Our recipe of the week is also relatively easy to make, and comes from our cookbook of the week - Cook and Enjoy. … Click Here for the recipe

The Wickedfood Team

Wickedfood Cooking School runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built cooking studio. Classes are run in the mornings and evenings 7 days a week (subject to a minimum of 12 people). The venue is also popular for corporate events and private functions – team building cooking classes, birthdays, kitchen teas, and dinner parties with a difference.

Our classes are hands-on, where every person gets to participate in the preparation of the dishes. They are also a lot of fun where you not only learn new skills, but get to meet people with similar interests. For corporate groups and team building cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.

A popular Florentine dish as a lasagne substitute. Crêpes are much lighter than pasta and have a delicate flavour. They work just as well with a cream or a meat sauce filling.

Crêpes

2 eggs
±1/2-1 cup milk
2T olive oil, plus extra for frying
Pinch salt
1 cup flour, sifted

Filling

600g (2 packets) spinach, trimmed
150g ricotta
2T grated parmesan/pecorino cheese
1 egg, lightly beaten
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
Salt

Sauce

2T butter
1/2 cup flour
4-5 cups milk
3T grated parmesan/pecorino cheese
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Crêpes

1. Whisk the eggs in a bowl until well blended. Add the milk, the olive oil and salt. Gradually mix in the flour. The batter should be smooth and have the consistency of cream (add extra milk if necessary).
2. Brush a ±15cm nonstick frying pan with oil and place over moderate heat. Pour in just enough batter to create a very thin sheet when the pan is tilted. Cook for ±1 minute until the edges lift easily. Turn the crêpe and cook the other side for ±30 seconds. Transfer to a flat surface (plate) to cool. Continue until the batter is finished. There should be ±12 crêpes in all. (They can also be made ahead and frozen.)

Filling

1. Preheat an oven to 180°C. Cook the spinach in a little salted boiling water until tender, ±2 minutes. Drain well, pressing out any excess liquid, and finely chop.
2. Mix the spinach, ricotta, cheese, egg and nutmeg in a bowl. Season to taste with salt.
3. Spoon ±1T filling in a line down the centre of each crêpe and roll up. Place them seam side down, on a plate.

Sauce

1. In a small saucepan over moderate heat, melt the butter. Add the flour, and blend well, stirring consistently for ±3 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the milk, gradually so as not to form lumps. Once all the milk is incorporated, return to the heat and continue to stir until the sauce has thickened.
2. Remove from the heat and add the parmesan. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
3. Pour enough sauce into a shallow baking dish to form a thin layer on the base. Arrange the crêpes side by side, seam side down on top of the sauce. Spoon the remaining sauce over the crêpes (at this stage, the dish can be covered with clingfilm and kept in the fridge).
4. Bake until the sauce bubbles slightly and the crêpes are heated through, ±20 minutes.
5. Remove from the oven and serve immediately.

Wickedfood Cooking School

Sunninghill – (011) 234-3252 sunninghill@wickedfood.co.za

Wickedfood cooking school runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built Johannesburg cooking studios. Cookery classes are run in the mornings and evenings 7 days a week (subject to a minimum of 12 people). The venue is also popular for corporate events and private functions – team building cooking classes, birthdays, kitchen teas, and dinner parties with a difference.

Our cooking lessons are hands-on, where every person gets to participate in the preparation of the dishes. They are also a lot of fun where you not only learn new skills, but get to meet people with similar interests. For corporate groups and teambuilding cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.

Quick and easy to make, perfect at home as a starter for a dinner party, or as a satisfying meal with a big salad. The spaghetti is served with pangritata (fried toasted breadcrumbs), which gives the dish an excellent texture and crunch.

Pangritata

±1/2 cup grapeseed or olive oil
1 clove garlic, finely sliced
±1/3 cup fresh thyme
±100g fresh breadcrumbs
Salt & pepper

500g spaghetti
±1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
10 anchovy fillets
1T lemon juice
2 small dried red chillies, crushed

Pangritata

1. Place the oil in a heavy frying pan and heat. Fry the garlic, thyme and breadcrumbs until they begin to toast, stirring every now and again until the crumbs are really crisp and golden (take care not to overcook, they must be golden not dark brown). Season with salt and pepper.
2. Bring a large pot of water to the boil add the salt and the spaghetti, and cook for ±10 minutes.
3. While the spaghetti is cooking, place the remaining olive oil in a pan with the minced garlic, and heat gently. Once the garlic begins to soften, add the anchovy fillets. As they begin to melt, add the lemon juice and chillies.
4. Add the drained spaghetti, and toss well to coat in the sauce, then transfer to a warm serving dish, garnish with the pangritata and serve immediately.

Serves 4 as a main course, 8 as a starter

Wickedfood Cooking School

Sunninghill – (011) 234-3252 sunninghill@wickedfood.co.za

Wickedfood cooking school runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built Johannesburg cooking studios. Cookery classes are run in the mornings and evenings 7 days a week (subject to a minimum of 12 people). The venue is also popular for corporate events and private functions – team building cooking classes, birthdays, kitchen teas, and dinner parties with a difference.

Our cooking lessons are hands-on, where every person gets to participate in the preparation of the dishes. They are also a lot of fun where you not only learn new skills, but get to meet people with similar interests. For corporate groups and teambuilding cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.

Q: I would like to know how to make my own pasta. How long can i keep the pasta dough in the fridge?

A: We make fresh pasta at least once a week at Wickedfood cooking school and once people taste the difference they often wonder why they haven’t learn’t to make it sooner. As far as keeping it in the fridge i wouldnt keep it in its raw form for longer than 2-3days, If filling or rolling it does freeze very well for ±3 months just make sure to use enough flour to prevent them from sticking to one another. I have added the following recipe which we do in our corporate team building class and its always a hit.
Factory made pasta is made with flour and water, whereas in homemade pasta, eggs generally take the place of water, giving a much richer product. Homemade pasta keeps well so long as it is properly dried. It also freezes well.

As a basic recipe, to make ±500g of pasta, enough for 4 standard servings, use:

300g flour
3 large eggs
1/2t salt (optional)

There are four steps to making egg dough:

1.    Combining eggs and flour – Make a well in the flour, pour the liquid into the well and slowly fold the flour into the liquid until a dough is formed (add 1-2T water if the dough seems too dry and does not want to bind together, but do not add too much!!)

2.    Kneading the dough – Empty the dough onto a clean work surface and knead with your hands until it is well blended. Allow the dough to rest in the fridge for ±20 minutes, wrapped in plastic.

Rolling the dough
Divide the dough into 4 equal balls. Work with one ball at a time and keep the others covered.
Sprinkle the work surface liberally with flour. Flatten the ball, and then begin to roll it out, working quickly so that it does not dry out. After each roll, give it a quarter turn and flip it, dusting with more flour if necessary (do not use too much flour, as is also tends to dry the dough).
Try and roll it into a rectangle to approximately 2mm thick.

4.    Shaping – Allow the pasta to rest, covered with a tea towel on a flour-dusted surface for a few minutes before cutting it into the desired shapes – for flat pasta there are 3 basic thicknesses:
Pappardelle ±4cm wide;
Tagliatelle ±2cm wide; and
Taglierini ±1cm wide;
To cut the pasta, flour it well, fold it along its length into ±7cm sections to create a square, then cut into the desired widths.

Click here to see a great mushroom sauce to go with this fresh pasta

Q: I have read that one must knead pasta for 10 minutes, and I have been doing just that to rather nice success.  But what I haven’t read is just what happens to the dough during that duration of time.  What is gluten? What’s the science of what is happening during the kneading process? Thank you so much!

A: Gluten is a composite of the proteins gliadin and glutenin. These exist, conjoined with starch, in the endosperms of some grass-related grains, notably wheat, rye, and barley. Gliadin and glutenin compose about 80% of the protein contained in wheat seed.

Gluten is a mixture of proteins in the flour that, when kneaded, become a cohesive network of elastic strands. as the carbon dioxide gas develops, it becomes trapped inside the gluten structure. the trapped gas finds a home in the countless, minute, preexisting air pockets within the dough or it creates its own minuscule cavities. as more gas develops, pressure builds up within these spaces. This pressure stretches the gluten strands, increasing the volume of the dough.

I hope this answers your question.

Wickedfood Chef

Wickedfood Cooking School

Sunninghill – (011) 234-3252 sunninghill@wickedfood.co.za

Wickedfood Cooking school runs Johannesburg cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built cooking studios. Cooking courses are run in the mornings and evenings 7 days a week (subject to a minimum of 12 people). The venue is also popular for corporate events and private functions – team building cooking classes, birthdays, kitchen teas, and dinner parties with a difference.

Our cooking lessons are hands-on, where every person gets to participate in the preparation of the dishes. They are also a lot of fun where you not only learn new skills, but get to meet people with similar interests. For corporate groups and teambuilding cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.