At Wickedfood Cooking School, we offer cooking classes for individuals on every alternate Sunday afternoon and most Mondays.  On Sunday just gone by,  we ran a pasta cooking class, where students learned the art of making pasta, including how to make flavoured pasta and how to fill pasta,  as well as a variety of pasta sauces.

Congrarelations to Hannelie and partner, our recent compertition winner

The class was presented by Mike, our development chef, and attended by twelve eager students, two of whom were there as prize winners for our recent competition.

Mike showing students how to fill ravioli

Cutting chilli flavoured pasta into fettuccini

During the class the students were shown that techniques of making four flavoured pastas:

1. Chilli tagliatelle – with a seafood cream;
2. Yellow and green Tagliatelle – beautiful colours with a cream, chicken and mushroom sauce;
3. Pepper fettuccini – with  a simple cream and parmesan sauce (Alfredo sauce)
4. Fried sweet pasta – with grappa in the dough.

They also made two delicious filled pastas:

1. Cappelletti – with a butter cream sauce.
2. Beef filled spinach ravioli – with a mushroom, tomato and red wine sauce.

Click here for more pictures of students learning to make pasta

For more on making pasta click on one of the links below:

1. Making Fresh Pasta
2. Pasta Dough
3. Mushroom sauce for pasta
4. Colouring pasta
5. Broccoli and Pesto Tagliatelle
6. Beef bolognese
7. Basil Pesto
8. Fettuccine with sausage & tomatoes
9. Baker’s spaghetti

Wickedfood Cooking School

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

Runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built cooking studios. 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 teambuilding cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.

Wickedfood Cooking School, SUNNINGHILL

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

Hi all,

As mentioned in the last newsletter, we will now be sending the newsletter out on an alternative weekly basis, as most of you requested in a recent survey.  For those who cannot live without a newsletter, on every other week, we will be publishing our alternative newsletter on the blog. Look out for it from next week.

Who are Wickedfood instructors ?

Our classes for individual participants are still as popular as ever.  These are hands on classes, run by professionals, who enjoy sharing the extensive knowledge of food with the students.

Mike and Cilla are the founders of Wickedfood and have been teaching at Wickedfood for over ten years.  They have been in the food industry, writing about food, developing new food products and consulting to the food industry for over twenty years.

Steve has worked his way up in the food industry and has lectured students at most of south Africa’s prestigious chefs’ schools, where he continues to work with senior students.

Guest lecturers - from time to time we invite specialists to run classes, in the past we have had food writers, restaurateurs and even international chefs.  Our quarterly sushi class is run by a sushi master (next class 19 April, book early as there are only a few places left).

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

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 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.
• Monday 29 March at 6pm – The tastes of France (R360pp). An introduction to French cuisine including chicken liver pâté, French onion soup, entrecote pommes frites, and crème caramel.
• Monday 05 April at 6pm – 30 minute meals (R370 pp). Six quick and easy to prepare dishes for two includes chickpea and pumpkin curry, grilled beef, grilled tuna and rich chocolate self-saucing pudding.
• Monday 8 April at 6pm – Easy to prepare Italian dishes (R360pp). An introduction to Italian cuisine including tomato pizza, bean and pasta soup, cannelloni, grilled fish, bean salad and lemon tart.
• Sunday 18 April at 4pm – Simply Asian with Neil Perry (R390pp). Revered as one of Australia’s foremost chefs and international TV food celebrities, Neil Perry’s first love is Asian food, with a strong Chinese leaning. In this class we explore some of his favourite dishes, taken from his book, Simply Asian. Dishes include fried sweet corn cakes, steamed fish, tangerine beef and stir-fried vegetables with noodles.
• Monday 19 April at 6pm – Sushi 1 – The basics of sushi making (R395pp – maximum 18, so book early) The basics of sushi making – cutting fish, making rice, California and maki rolls, nigirizushi (finger), and hand rolls.

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

Looking for info on food?

If you have any  food-related questions, 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

To my mind, one of the best books to come out of South Africa, is A farm In My Heart by Emilia le Roux and Francois Smuts. It is written in a story form, and account of daily life  on the farm… Click Here for more.

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

On food – Preserving :

Now that autumn  is officially upon us and the nights are definitely getting cooler, delicious summer fruits and vegetables will very shortly start becoming scarce.  Fortunately at present there is still an abundance, a lot of it at very reasonable prices.  The best way of storing these delicious flavours is through preserving.

Preserving food can be tricky business. There are however a few very simple points to remember … Click Here for more information.

Food personality feature – Hairy Bikers :

Over the past few weeks, a fascinating television series has been running on BBC Lifestyle entitled The Hairy Bikers Food Tour of Britain.  But who are the Hairy Bikers?

The Hairy Bikers are David Myers and Simon King, two northern blokes with a passion for cooking and food. The pair began their TV careers working behind the scenes, Si as a first assistant director and locations’ manager for film and television and Dave as a BBC make-up artist specializing in prosthetics. It was on the set of a TV drama that they first met and became friends. The cooks first appeared in front of the camera for their pilot Hairy Bikers series, filmed in Portugal … Click Here for the full story.

Recipe of the week:

Moroccan Chicken

North African cuisine, especially from Morocco cuisine, has taken the world by storm. It has a distinctive flavour, a blend of Middle Eastern ingredients with unique cooking styles.  In our cookbook of the week, A Farm In My Heart is their take on Moroccan Chicken. .… 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.

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.

You may remember Katie from the TV series which chronicled the couple’s trip to Tuscany to rediscover Giancarlo, her husband’s, culinary roots, and set up a cooking school.

In The Italian Cookery Course she has collated recipes, techniques and ingredients to create a unique compendium of Italian food. The book will guide you through the vast collection of famous recipes and lesser-known regional dishes, with clear instruction on how to replicate them at home. Each chapter contains ‘masterclasses’ on technique, revealing the practical secrets of Italian cooking and giving the reader new confidence in the kitchen. It has some great sections including:

• Italian breads – how to make your own starter dough, perfect ciabatta, Focaccia, and pizza;
• a great chapter on antipasti, including a guide on Italian cold meats cuts, demystifying various hams from Italy and even how to make your own Bresaola;
• Making pasta – adding colour and filling, as well as some mouthwatering sauces;
• a good section on Italian cheeses and how to use them; and
• An formative section on preserving.

Even if you have a host of other Italian cookery books, this book is well worth the purchase.

Wickedfood Cooking School

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

Runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built cooking studios. 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 teambuilding cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.

In this summer Watermelon salad, from Saveur Issue #113, watermelon is a sweet counterpoint to the briny pungency of feta and olives.

3 cups loosely packed arugula or rocket

1. In a large bowl, toss together the arugula, parsley, and mint. Divide greens between 4 serving bowls or plates.
2. In a medium bowl, toss together watermelon, olives, jalapeño, and onion.
3. Spoon the watermelon mixture, with its juice, evenly over the greens.
4. Sprinkle each salad with some of the feta and drizzle with olive oil.
5. Squeeze 1 lime half over the top of each salad and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Serves 4

For more great salad recipes, click here

Wickedfood Cooking School

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

Runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built cooking studios. 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 teambuilding cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.