Wickedfood Cooking School, SUNNINGHILL

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

Hi all,

In this cold weather, what better way to warm up, than with a tasty stew or hearty soup  – see our feature below for some great soup ideas, or search through our recipe section on the blog (We have 29 pages of delicious recipes).

The August  programme of Johannesburg cooking classes for individuals is now up on our website.  We have a mouthwatering selection of classes on offer, including a French cooking class, and a baking class, specializing in chocolate – see our recipe of the week to whet your appetite.

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 July and August programme .

Wickedfood Cooking School runs cooking classes with a minimum of 8 participants and a maximum of 12 as this gives everyone hands-on experience and keeps the cooking class small enough for maximum learning. These cooking classes are conducted by our senior instructors who have extensive experience in the food industry and share a variety of additional cooking tips throughout the  class.

• Monday 05 July at 6pm – Cooked in Africa (R380pp). Justin Bonello has become a cult hero in the South African culinary world. Through his quirky television series, and accompanying book, Cooked In Africa, he has taken a bunch of friends on a culinary road trip through southern Africa. In this Justin Bonello cooking class, we’ve taken a few of the recipes from the series and re-interpreted them to create a delicious South African cooking class.

• Monday 12 July at 6pm – Jamie’s Ministry of Food – quick meals and pastas (R350pp). This Jamie Oliver cooking class is inspired by Jamie’s book Ministry of Food, at Wickedfood Cooking School we regard it as his best. It is a perfect book for any beginner. We take six recipes from the book and re-interpret them, with plenty of tips along the way. Learning the secrets to successful  easy cooking, including spicy Moroccan stewed fish with couscous, chicken and leek stroganoff, broccoli and pesto tagliatelle, classic tomato spaghetti, macaroni cauliflower cheese bake and banana tarte tatin, with a wicked twist.
• Sunday 18 July at 4pm – Entertaining Italian style (R350pp). Great Italian cooking class, with dishes for entertaining with Italian flair including rice croquettes, Siena bread soup, semolina gnocchi, poached chicken with a caper/egg sauce and baked pears.

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.

On food

Soup

It’s so easy to make delicious, homemade soups, which are especially hearty in this cold winter weather.  But what is a soup?

Wikipedia defines soup as “...a food that is made by combining ingredients such as meat and vegetables with stock, juice, water or another liquid. Hot soups are additionally characterized by boiling solid ingredients in liquids in a pot until the flavour is extracted, forming a broth. Traditionally, soups are classified into two main groups: clear soups and thick soups. The established French classifications of clear soups are bouillon and consommé. Thick soups are classified depending upon the type of thickening agent used: purées are vegetable soups thickened with starch; bisques are made from puréed shellfish or vegetables thickened with cream;the  cream soups may be thickened with béchamel sauce; and veloutés are thickened with eggs, butter and cream. Other ingredients commonly used to thicken soups and broths include rice, flour and grains.“

Basic soups are very easy to make, as we constantly remind our cooking class students at Wickedfood Cooking School.  Chop equal quantities of onion, celery and carrots, and fry in a little butter or oil until the flavour is released.  Add a few chicken thighs and wings, slices of lamb neck, or some beef bones, cover with water or homemade stock and boil until the meat falls off the bone.  Add a handful of pulses such as lentils, barley or chickpeas, at the beginning of the cooking process, for more body.  Season to taste and serve.  See links to other websites in this article for some delicious soup recipes.

Soup as a figure of speech:

• Alphabet soup – a term often used to describe a large amount of acronyms used by an administration.
• Pea soup describes a thick or dense fog.
• Word soup refers to any collection of words that is ostensibly incomprehensible.
• Tag soup further refers to poorly coded HTML.

Click Here for some delicious soups from Jamie Oliver.

Book of the week

A Greener Life – Clarissa Dickson Wright and Johnny Scott

You may well remember Clarissa from the TV series Two Fat Ladies. In her more recent publications, A Greener Life, Clarissa and Johnny Scott look at how to live a more natural and self-sufficient life. They explore  issues from growing your own vegetables to using alternative energies, so that you have the knowledge to start living  greener.

In … Click Here for more.

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

Recipe of the week:

Chocolate brownies

This recipe is based on one that we use at Wickedfood Cooking School in our baking class, specializing in chocolate .  Chewy chocolate squares, one of the best brownie recipes around, and quick and easy to make. They use cocoa powder instead of chocolate.

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 – teambuilding 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.