Sur la Table cooking class: what a joke

"i could have taught this class"

-my wife

So first off, thank you to my brother and sister in law for what should have been the perfect gift; a cooking class. Sur La Table is a pretty capable store but the class was a sham. We picked "Sicily Date night" and were, well, excited, about learning to cook Italian food. What we got was two hacks in chef's coats and a couple recipes pulled from the world wide web. At the beginning of the class, the chef goes "be sure to read the whole recipe, and be familiar with all the steps". What that really meant is "I dont what youre making, so figure it out cuz im a hack".



So here is me making some sauce. We pureed tomatoes and had a TON of liquid in the pan. I ask the chef - "uh, is this supposed to be so watery?" He is like "yeah, well, let me see the recipe, uh, wow, huh."

The sauce was not bad actually, we started out with some shallot and anchovies in the pan, added the puree and just took some time to reduce the liquid. Unfortunately the finished pasta also included bread crumbs that were "toasted" also known as "burnt" and looked a lot like this -



This pasta was ultimately undone by the burnt toast topping. The noodles were cooked a perfect "al dente" but eating this dish was like licking a toaster.



So yeah, chicken can be boring, especially when its baked. But when the oven is not working properly you get rubbery skin AND dry chicken. Awesome.







This dish was the most interesting one of the night . . . till I tasted it. Squid was stuffed then simmered in a tomato sauce. The squid itself was alright but the stuffing was more like chewing gum.

CONCLUSION:

So if anyone says "lets take a cooking class at Sur La Table?" Save yourself the money and just go eat at Sbarros - its better food.

Strip Steak Trifecta: Dry Aged vs Organic vs Buffalo

While I almost always go for Dry Aged Prime beef, I thought a three way taste off would be a good way to try Organic Beef and compare them both to an old favorite of mine - Buffalo.




On the left is the Organic beef, Dry aged in the middle and Buffalo on the right. The Organic beef has a deep ruby red color, and features the least amount of marbling. The Dry Aged steak had a bright red color and the most marbling of the three. The Buffalo on the right features a hue of red similar to the Organic Beef with just a touch more marbling.



The steaks were rubbed with Sea Salt . . .



and a generous amount of cracked blackpeppercorn





I built my standard two stage fire in my weber with some hardwood charcoal I picked up from Home Depot called Cowboy. Apparently this brand of hardwood can hit temps of just over a 1,000 degrees, so I seared the steaks at about 4 minutes a side with the lid down before moving them to the cool side of the grill.



The steaks after being seared on both sides.



I pulled the steaks off after about 2 minutes on the cool side and let them rest another 10 minutes on the cutting board.



Threw together a peppercorn sauce . . .



Steamed some broccolini



Roasted some baby Yukon gold potatoes



The Buffalo is on the left, the Dry aged is on the top and the Organic is on the right. The Dry aged seemed to be the hands down winner, people asking for seconds and thirds. The flavor was salty, but in a really good way and this steak was the most tender.

The Organic beef was a real surprise. Given the fact that it had the least amount of marbling, I thought the steak would be a dog. I was wrong. The organic beef had a deep beefy flavor compared to the Buffalo and was very very juicy.

The Buffalo was still a solid steak despite coming third. Some found it a bit gamey and bit tougher that the other two but I would not hesitate in picking up a couple of these for a future BBQ.

While the Dry Aged beef was a favorite it comes at a hefty price, near $30 a pound. The Buffalo and Organic were at around $20 which, while not cheap is a steak to consider if you are looking to feed a party or not drop dead of a heart attack at 40.