Cooking in the Christmas Spirit

Students and staff are getting into the Christmas spirit as they take care of last minute preparations for the Christmas dinner at Hess Street School today. We will be heading over shortly to serve lunch to 300 elementary students! Watch our Facebook page for more photos from this fun day.

 

Gone Fishin’

How does your food go from this...

It’s not what you think. We’re not kicking back with a line in the water, or nursing a hot toddy over a hole in the ice. And there’s no catch and release policy. It is ‘Catch and Kill’ day at Liaison, and there is not much nostalgia involved.

It is a city kids’ fishing trip, as our students trek over to the nearby Asian market, a cooler full of water in tow. The merchants might think we are strange (they have never said), but are always happy to scoop a dozen or so tilapia from their live tanks and deposit them unceremoniously into the cooler. They handle live fish every day, so this non-event is a contrast to what lies in store back in the classroom.

One by one, the students, with varying degrees of trepidation, dip into the cooler to catch a fish with their bare hands, while trying to avoid the spiny back and dorsal fins. For most, it is the first time they have ever handled a whole fish, dead or alive. Some are repulsed at the prospect of knocking it on the head to kill it: others find filleting to be the greatest challenge.

The chef-instructors focus on the latter, but there’s a secondary message that they want to relay. Every piece of meat, fish or poultry that budding cooks and chefs will serve to their customers was at one time, a living, breathing being. We must respect and honour that life, and the process involved in bringing it to the table. 

......to this?

Visit our Facebook page for the whole story in photos.

Chef Greg Singh at GO Cooking

Chef Greg Singh at GO Cooking

The table is set for guests to enjoy wines
chosen for each course by the evening's sommelier.

Chef Greg Singh filled the house on Tuesday evening at GO Cooking in Hamilton.  Guests reserved their spot months in advance to learn how he adds his own twist to the comfort foods of our autumn harvest.  Potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, sweet potatoes; they all conjure memories of festive dinners and family gatherings. Our chef-instructor turned up the heat, though, adding chili oil to his soup, chorizo and jalapeño to the crown roast stuffing, garlic and caraway to the brussel sprouts and, best of all, bourbon to the sweet potato pie. 

The menu:

Butternut squash soup with candied pecans and chili oil

Crown roast of pork, stuffed with chorizo and cornbread

Yukon Gold mashed potatoes with garlic and buttermilk

Braised fennel

Brussel sprouts with garlic and caraway

Glazed carrots

Sweet potato, maple syrup and bourbon pie

Check our recipe page for a couple of Chef Greg's creations. 

The secret's in the sauce...and the soup, and the appetizers.

       
Where Cook Basic classes hinge on foundation and technique, Advanced students spend a lot of time expanding on those fundamentals and nurturing their creativity. With Advanced classes following on the heels of Basic level, students are thrown right into a series of days that test their memory, concentration, creativity and organizational skills.

The challenge starts with sauces: reviewing the five mother sauces that are spun like gold into dozens of delectable smooth-as-velvet, sweet, savory, fiery or tangy finishes that can make a well-crafted dish pop, sizzle and sing.

Simon whipped up a Hollandaise sauce
over hot water.

During Week Two they revisit a number of soups and breads, and learn a few new ones along the way. The process of making a sparkling clear consommé is reviewed, from its birth as a full-flavored stock through its clarification. With a list of 15 different soups- everything from purees and cream soups to clear broths- they build their repertoire of breads alongside. The week culminates in a two-hour demonstration of their skills, with five soups and five breads to show for their efforts. 

Nathan made crispy chips from paper-thin
slices of  candy cane beets.

Appetizer week finds the budding chefs turning out progressively more imaginative and abundant morsels. The final day finds them absorbed in the kitchen, their concentration casting a blanket of silence save for the muted thud of knives against the cutting boards. This deceiving stillness, though, gives way to the clatter of china plates with the call from Chef Dan, “Five minutes to service, folks!”

Chef Dan will inspire the artist in you

Have you ever wondered how chefs create unusual and photo-inspiring cakes? This is your chance to learn some of those secrets. We are running a six-part series on Cake Decorating with Chef Dan Notley, every Wednesday evening (6:30 – 10:00 pm) from June 13 through July 18.

Chef Dan has thirty years of experience in the kitchen, a repertoire of cakes that are playful works of art, and a teaching style that puts even the most timid students at ease. He will inspire your creative side using fondants, butter creams, gum paste, royal icing and air brushing techniques on flat, tiered and sculptured cakes.   

Space is filling up quickly. Reserve your spot before June 4 by calling 905-308-9333, or email liaison.hamilton@sympatico.ca.

Questions? Call or email us for more information.

 

Dying to cook...careful with that knife chef.

Sharp knives, hot stoves and near boiling vats of oil are just the short list of things that can go horribly wrong in the heat of a professional kitchen.  As Chef Dan likes to point out, “There are five ways ‘till Sunday we can kill you.”

It’s Week 3 now for the afternoon class in Culinary Arts 1, and the students are itching to get out of the classroom and into their chef whites. These first five weeks of theory are essential though, to ensure that minor cuts and burns (and a lot of misinformation) are the only casualties in our training.

Some students embrace the book learning. Others, not so much. The chef-instructors know that proper food handling, memory-taxing lists of food-borne pathogens and equipment safety measures are not for the feint of heart. To keep us all engaged, they serve up sides of stories from the front line to help us digest all the material we’re covering.

Chef Dan is animated in his hair-raising tales of skewering one cook with a meat fork (he survived), fishing another’s severed digits from a meat slicer, and rescuing a third colleague after his knife slipped across his wrist. Chef Bill Sharpe has his own style of story-telling with anecdotes from his many years in hotel kitchens and his own restaurants (Blowing the door off the stack oven has been the best so far.)  Their overall message? We are heading into a profession that requires teamwork to stay safe. “We can only have a good time in the kitchen,” says Chef Dan, “if you are communicating, paying attention and on your game every day.”

Liaison's Chef Dan Notley at GO Cooking, Hamilton

by Katrina Simmons

On Tuesday, March 20, Liaison's chef instructor Dan Notley will transform humble veal into Saltimbocca for a late winter meal that will make a locavore believer out of any die-hard skeptic.

The veal, sourced from Delft Blue in Cambridge, will be layered with whole sage and proscuitto, rendering its normally mild flavour bold enough to partner with a warm brussel sprout salad – another dish to suspend your disbelief that anything delicious can come from local larders this time of year.

The little brassicas, emerging unscathed from winter storage, are deconstructed, blanched in sugar water and combined with caramelized onion, nutmeg, balsamic vinegar and parmesan cheese for a surprising show of colour in these days when we’re longing for the first spring greens.

Chef Dan will round out the meal with equally creative incarnations of pears and potatoes, both still available from farms around Hamilton and Niagara. 

The class, taking shape at 44 Frid Street in Hamilton, is already sold out. To inquire about cancellations or upcoming classes at GO Cooking, contact Karen Aquino at kaquino@thespec.com, or call her at 

905-526-3457.