Cooking by Others

View of the Manhattan Bridge and Brooklyn from the FDR Drive on our drive down to TriBeCa

At Cooking by the Book with our souvenir aprons!

Salad with Portabella Piccata

Chicken with couscous & goat cheese flan and zucchini salad

Molten chocolate cake (this was our 3 course meal at Cooking by the Book)

Our firm had a summer event at Cooking by the Book this past Thursday, where we all got together and were instructed on how to cook various parts of a three-course meal. It was a fun (albeit expensive for the firm) event, and we got souvenir aprons and recipe booklets. There were some really good recipes there - I just want to know what I can substitute for heavy cream in some of the recipes. I was on the dessert team (what a surprise...).

But the cooking event got me wondering... whether food always tastes better when it's made by someone else. After all, I've always thought that sandwiches and salads taste better when someone else makes them. I could make sandwiches with the same ingredients as they use at Subway, but it probably won't taste quite the same. (For example, I had a turkey & provolone cheese sandwich today with tomatoes, onions, sweet peppers, oregano, spinach, and mustard on Italian herb and cheese bread... it was quite good, but I'm sure my making it wouldn't taste as good.) Same goes for salads. And most other dishes too, it seems. At Cooking by the Book, we did some of the cooking ourselves, but since it's a highly controlled event, we didn't really do "all" the cooking by ourselves... that must be why it still tasted so good. :)

The salad was very basic, and the portabella piccata was... interesting. It wasn't bad, but I probably won't try that one myself. The chicken was good, but maybe a little too many spices, and too much ginger for my liking. (I'm glad I wasn't on the chicken team because I am so not into ginger!) The couscous and goat cheese flan was my favorite part of the whole dinner - I would love to make this again, I just need a substitute for the cream! The zucchini salad was also quite good, I could go for that again. :) And the dessert... well... it's hard to have a bad molten chocolate cake. ;)

All in all, I feel so lucky that it's been another excellent food week. I've had lunches at Aquavit, Vong, Bukhara Grill, and the Friars Club... dinners at Daniel and the Cooking by the Book event... yum. :)