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Find out what's cookin'- Local cooking schools offer variety of classes
by Dawn Pillsbury, Staff Writer
Want to sharpen your cooking skills? Learn about healthy food? Make a killer dessert? There are some cooking schools nearby to teach you how.
Guerneville Applewood innkeepers Jim Caron and Darryl Notter founded La Buona Forchetta a year ago because they had a spare kitchen.
"This was the restaurant kitchen years ago," said Notter, sitting in front of a big bowl of persimmons in the cooking school kitchen. "It was silly to let it sit empty, so we opened a cooking school."
La Buona Forchetta features chefs Caron and Notter bring over from Italy. "Chef Andrea Sposini made an Italian Easter feast this spring," said Notter.
He said their classes are usually filled with people who already are serious cooks.
"One woman had already graduated from the California Culinary Academy and wanted to keep her finger in," he said. "We get serious home chefs who enjoy cooking and want to expand their skills. Some just enjoy good food."
The classes are mostly demonstrations, where students sit around the kitchen's large counter/table and watch chefs performing culinary magic.
"We have plans to rip out the walls and make this all one space," Notter said, pointing to the walls separating the kitchen from the hall and dining room. "Then we could get 20 people in here. Now it's usually 10."
The school is usually taught by the restaurant's executive chef Gabrielle Dery, trained at the New England Culinary Institute. Classes last half the day, starting in the morning for lunch classes and in the afternoon for dinner classes. They last about six hours and end in a big meal with wine.
"But you're tasting all the way," Notter said. "Sometimes people don't make it all the way to dessert."
The chef demonstrates how to make a meal, usually five or six dishes, from start to finish. Past classes have been "Summer Luncheon Party" with chilled corn soup with crab-basil salad, local salmon with hummus and spicy cucumber relish and buttermilk panna cotta with summer berries and "Applewood's Signature Desserts," a survey of the use of spices in Applewood's desserts: spiced apple fougasse and the cardamom-chocolate crème brulee.
Classes sometimes features local experts, like the Oct. 25 "Mushroom Cooking with Chef Brian and Charmoon" with guest forager Charmoon Richardson of Wild About Mushrooms Co. cooking his famous morels supreme. Then-executive chef Brian Gerritsen prepared wild mushroom crepe stuffed with butternut purée in a sherry sauce and finished with pickled shiitakes with local farmstead cheeses.
Though they've put the inn, restaurant and cooking school up for sale - they want to move to Italy after 18 years at Applewood - Notter said he hopes the new owner will keep the classes going. Next year's line-up starts in February with a Valentine's Day menu of oysters on the half-shell, pomegranate and blood orange salad, beef tenderloin and chocolate on Feb. 4 and "Soup, soup, soup" on Feb. 21. Prices run from $100 to $150.
The inn is just south of Guerneville on Highway 116. Contact www.applewoodinn.com or 869-9093.
Healdsburg women Donna del Rey and Teresa Brooks started a roaming cooking school, Relish Culinary School, this summer.
"Healdsburg has such great chefs and lots of good wine," explained Brooks. "This provides people with a great opportunity to get to know the chefs."
Relish classes happen all over the Healdsburg area, including sausage-making at Marietta Winery and a "Fall Dinner Party" at the Vineyard Club in Geyserville. Future events are planned in restaurant kitchens, The Flying Goat ("Coffee Desserts at the Goat" with chef Amy Schaefers) and in Bella Vineyards' new wine cave.
"We find intriguing venues, unknown spots," said del Rey. "We're creating something that builds on the sense of place, not just a dinner."
Upcoming classes include a holiday baking class for kids at the Vineyard Club. For $25 kids will make dough, roll, cut, bake and decorate gingerbread and sugar cookies, including dipping in chocolate.
The plans call for finding a permanent location someday, they said, but for now they're having fun finding temporary sites.
"Even when we do get a location we'll still mix it up with different locations," said del Rey.
Both Brooks and del Rey are serious but not professional chefs, they said, but have lots of chef friends.
"We've been lucky to have excellent chefs standing behind us from the get-go," said Brooks. "They were willing to jump in and do our first classes."
Having small, intimate classes makes them more fun, said del Rey.
"People ask questions and tell stories," she said. "The chefs tell stories about when they did things wrong. It makes people feel more comfortable."
Class prices run from $30 to $65 for three-hour classes with a meal and wine and often food to take home. Contact them at www.relishculinary.com or 431-9999.
Want to get healthier by eating tasty, local food? Patty Facendini opened Full Circle Living Center at 330 South Main St. in Sebastopol in September to teach natural foods cooking and wellness through eating.
"Everything we do here has a natural twist," she said, helping a kids' class decorate sugar and gingerbread cookies made with whole wheat flour and dried sugar cane juice for a holiday baking class.
"This is the only time you'll see white sugar here," she said, mixing powdered sugar with heavy cream for frosting.
Past Full Circle menus have included argula salad with oranges, pomegranate and goat cheese and toasted pita bread with hummus, quinoa timbales, butter lettuce salad with orange-lavender dressing and homemade ginger ale.
Facendini, a nutritionist and whole foods chef, said many people are surprised by how good local, natural food tastes. "It's fun to see people taste it," she said.
Teaching children about good cooking is especially rewarding, she said. "My daughter, Kathryn, hardly ever gets to eat her own lunch," she said. "Kids will eat good food if it's in front of them."
She grows a lot of the fruits and vegetables for the school in her Sebastopol garden and has planted many herbs in gardens around the school, a converted house. She also buys from Scott Matthieson's Laguna Farm, she said.
"Fresh, local produce is the most nutritionally dense food," she explained. Growing the food is part of the full circle - vegetable trimmings get frozen for stock, then composted for the garden. "We waste nothing," she said.
Classes are $25 for breakfast, $20 for lunch, $75 for dinner. Kids' classes are $25 with more opening up next year. She will also teach classes in food for diabetics and people undergoing chemotherapy. Contact Full Circle Living at www.fullcirclelivingcenter.com or 829-6707.
Guerneville Applewood innkeepers Jim Caron and Darryl Notter founded La Buona Forchetta a year ago because they had a spare kitchen.
"This was the restaurant kitchen years ago," said Notter, sitting in front of a big bowl of persimmons in the cooking school kitchen. "It was silly to let it sit empty, so we opened a cooking school."
La Buona Forchetta features chefs Caron and Notter bring over from Italy. "Chef Andrea Sposini made an Italian Easter feast this spring," said Notter.
He said their classes are usually filled with people who already are serious cooks.
"One woman had already graduated from the California Culinary Academy and wanted to keep her finger in," he said. "We get serious home chefs who enjoy cooking and want to expand their skills. Some just enjoy good food."
The classes are mostly demonstrations, where students sit around the kitchen's large counter/table and watch chefs performing culinary magic.
"We have plans to rip out the walls and make this all one space," Notter said, pointing to the walls separating the kitchen from the hall and dining room. "Then we could get 20 people in here. Now it's usually 10."
The school is usually taught by the restaurant's executive chef Gabrielle Dery, trained at the New England Culinary Institute. Classes last half the day, starting in the morning for lunch classes and in the afternoon for dinner classes. They last about six hours and end in a big meal with wine.
"But you're tasting all the way," Notter said. "Sometimes people don't make it all the way to dessert."
The chef demonstrates how to make a meal, usually five or six dishes, from start to finish. Past classes have been "Summer Luncheon Party" with chilled corn soup with crab-basil salad, local salmon with hummus and spicy cucumber relish and buttermilk panna cotta with summer berries and "Applewood's Signature Desserts," a survey of the use of spices in Applewood's desserts: spiced apple fougasse and the cardamom-chocolate crème brulee.
Classes sometimes features local experts, like the Oct. 25 "Mushroom Cooking with Chef Brian and Charmoon" with guest forager Charmoon Richardson of Wild About Mushrooms Co. cooking his famous morels supreme. Then-executive chef Brian Gerritsen prepared wild mushroom crepe stuffed with butternut purée in a sherry sauce and finished with pickled shiitakes with local farmstead cheeses.
Though they've put the inn, restaurant and cooking school up for sale - they want to move to Italy after 18 years at Applewood - Notter said he hopes the new owner will keep the classes going. Next year's line-up starts in February with a Valentine's Day menu of oysters on the half-shell, pomegranate and blood orange salad, beef tenderloin and chocolate on Feb. 4 and "Soup, soup, soup" on Feb. 21. Prices run from $100 to $150.
The inn is just south of Guerneville on Highway 116. Contact www.applewoodinn.com or 869-9093.
Healdsburg women Donna del Rey and Teresa Brooks started a roaming cooking school, Relish Culinary School, this summer.
"Healdsburg has such great chefs and lots of good wine," explained Brooks. "This provides people with a great opportunity to get to know the chefs."
Relish classes happen all over the Healdsburg area, including sausage-making at Marietta Winery and a "Fall Dinner Party" at the Vineyard Club in Geyserville. Future events are planned in restaurant kitchens, The Flying Goat ("Coffee Desserts at the Goat" with chef Amy Schaefers) and in Bella Vineyards' new wine cave.
"We find intriguing venues, unknown spots," said del Rey. "We're creating something that builds on the sense of place, not just a dinner."
Upcoming classes include a holiday baking class for kids at the Vineyard Club. For $25 kids will make dough, roll, cut, bake and decorate gingerbread and sugar cookies, including dipping in chocolate.
The plans call for finding a permanent location someday, they said, but for now they're having fun finding temporary sites.
"Even when we do get a location we'll still mix it up with different locations," said del Rey.
Both Brooks and del Rey are serious but not professional chefs, they said, but have lots of chef friends.
"We've been lucky to have excellent chefs standing behind us from the get-go," said Brooks. "They were willing to jump in and do our first classes."
Having small, intimate classes makes them more fun, said del Rey.
"People ask questions and tell stories," she said. "The chefs tell stories about when they did things wrong. It makes people feel more comfortable."
Class prices run from $30 to $65 for three-hour classes with a meal and wine and often food to take home. Contact them at www.relishculinary.com or 431-9999.
Want to get healthier by eating tasty, local food? Patty Facendini opened Full Circle Living Center at 330 South Main St. in Sebastopol in September to teach natural foods cooking and wellness through eating.
"Everything we do here has a natural twist," she said, helping a kids' class decorate sugar and gingerbread cookies made with whole wheat flour and dried sugar cane juice for a holiday baking class.
"This is the only time you'll see white sugar here," she said, mixing powdered sugar with heavy cream for frosting.
Past Full Circle menus have included argula salad with oranges, pomegranate and goat cheese and toasted pita bread with hummus, quinoa timbales, butter lettuce salad with orange-lavender dressing and homemade ginger ale.
Facendini, a nutritionist and whole foods chef, said many people are surprised by how good local, natural food tastes. "It's fun to see people taste it," she said.
Teaching children about good cooking is especially rewarding, she said. "My daughter, Kathryn, hardly ever gets to eat her own lunch," she said. "Kids will eat good food if it's in front of them."
She grows a lot of the fruits and vegetables for the school in her Sebastopol garden and has planted many herbs in gardens around the school, a converted house. She also buys from Scott Matthieson's Laguna Farm, she said.
"Fresh, local produce is the most nutritionally dense food," she explained. Growing the food is part of the full circle - vegetable trimmings get frozen for stock, then composted for the garden. "We waste nothing," she said.
Classes are $25 for breakfast, $20 for lunch, $75 for dinner. Kids' classes are $25 with more opening up next year. She will also teach classes in food for diabetics and people undergoing chemotherapy. Contact Full Circle Living at www.fullcirclelivingcenter.com or 829-6707.
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