My friend a I got a group buy­ing coupon for cook­ing lessons at Cook­shop, a cook­ing equip­ment store located at he City Square mall near the Van­cou­ver City Hall. We decided to try out the tapas class because the menu was in sea­son and seemed deli­cious. We’ve taken another class here before, but that was a demon­stra­tion by the chef and we get to taste the fin­ished prod­uct. This one, how­ever, was a par­tic­i­pa­tion class. I would pre­fer a par­tic­i­pa­tion class rather than demon­stra­tion because we get hands-on experience.

The menu:

• Beef tar­tar with capers & shal­lots served on toast points with a quail egg
• Margherita Pizza with fresh tomato, young boc­concini and fresh basil
• Crispy cala­mari with tomato caper sauce
• Local B.C. hal­ibut cakes with roasted pep­per spicy aioli
• Potato ravi­oli stuffed with chicken and sage
• Choco­late panna cotta

The instruc­tor was very pro­fes­sional and explained the steps and ingre­di­ents of the recipes very well. As my friend was chat­ting away with the chef, we found out he actu­ally worked and trained in France and New York as well. The menu was deli­cious made with fresh ingre­di­ents. As we were divided into smaller groups, our group was in charge of mak­ing the potato ravi­oli and crispy cala­mari. The class started off by prepar­ing the choco­late panna cotta, too bad there wasn’t enough time to chill them so we ate out of the mould instead. It was the first time I had the beef tar­tar, not the first time hav­ing raw beef though. It tasted good with a con­trast of tex­tures of the crunchy toasted baguette and ten­der beef and the rich­ness of the quail egg yolk.

We made the pizza from scratch start­ing with the yeast dough. The pizza tasted very fresh although the dough could have been more crusty — it tasted a bit too soft, almost like a bread. The crispy cala­mari was one of my favourites, it was easy to pre­pare — sim­ply breaded with flour, egg wash, panko and deep fried until crispy (I did most of the deep fry­ing) and then sea­soned with salt and pep­per and served with a tangy tomato caper sauce. The nice part about it was that the cala­mari was not rub­bery or tough at all. I found out from the chef that he used “U10” squids mean­ing 1 pound would con­sist of just under 10 squid tubes and that is the per­fect size for this recipe = TENDER. We didn’t really get make the hal­ibut cakes but it was also good, it turned out that there was also cod in the cakes. I like the fact that they were fin­ished in the oven rather than deep fried. These were basi­cally cooked fish with mashed pota­toes and shaped into cakes, breaded and baked. The spicy aioli was a nice touch as well (could have used a bet­ter olive oil though). The cakes were fluffy and flavourful.

Our group got to make the potato ravi­oli. Pota­toes were sliced thinly on a man­dolin and baked briefly with olive oil to soften and they were stuffed with a minced cooked chicken and sage stuff­ing in between two slices of potato. We had trou­ble adher­ing the edges of the ravi­o­lis though. They were then baked again until crispy. As messy as they look, they tasted pretty good. Maybe the potato slices weren’t thin enough so they wouldn’t stick together.

As I men­tioned above, we had the choco­late panna cotta out of the mould but it was nonethe­less deli­cious. It had a very del­i­cate and smooth tex­ture and not overly sweet or rich. It was a great fin­ish to the meal. At the end my friend and I stole and ate more cala­mari from the left­overs from the next table, the chef saw and chuck­led 8) It was a really good experience.