In the Kitchen

What's New at Paulding & Company

March 2009

Spring blossoms on the plum trees, blustery rain filling the reservoirs, and brightly flavored pea shoots in the farmer’s market. Signs of spring are here! At the Kitchen, we’ve been continuing our busy ways. Besides assorted catering, team building groups and birthday parties, we are hosting a whole bunch of wedding planners this week in a mini-fair, combining forces with a baker and a letter press invitation maker, and focusing our attention on showing the planners how we run a Rehearsal Dinner in our kitchen.

If you’ve sat at a restaurant for a rehearsal dinner, you know you get to talk with the people to your left, to your right, and across from you—and if you hoped to get to meet more members of the new family and get to know them a bit, you are mostly out of luck. At Paulding & Company, we perceived a need for something better, and a few years ago, came up with our winning formula: we turned the rehearsal dinner into a festive cooking event! We’ve hosted quite a few, and every one has been a smash success, garnering rave reviews from the guests, and often becoming the topic of conversation at the wedding reception and beyond, as new family members greet one another as new friends after their time in our kitchen. The members of both families, by cooking together, get to know one another in a relaxed atmosphere—and then, they get to sit down to a sociable feast. There are always a few “non-cooks” willing to take pictures and it’s also a relaxing way for the bride and groom to spend the evening before their wedding. If you are tying the knot this year, or know anyone who is—do think of us!

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!

Cook! Creative Culinary Camp is launched. Our wonderful, fun summer camp for pre-teens and teens is a reality. Find the information and registration form on our website.

We’re very excited about this camp. We have a GREAT format including:

• Two one-week camps featuring International Street Food, ending in a Street Food Festival for the families of the campers.
• Two two-week camps where we’ll concentrate on skills the first week, then create and perform a live cooking show (after all, we WERE the 1st season Top Chef kitchen) for the families.

We have amazing guest stars lined up—Casey Thompson from Top Chef, Paul Canales (Oliveto), Andrea Nguyen (author of Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors), Ben Ward (Dopo) and more to come, our new Brazilian cooking expert Alexandra Fochi (see below), and more. We’ll concentrate on healthy versions of our dishes, and we’re even working on getting students from one or two colleges for the arts to come and make videos of our cooking show camps. If you’ve been looking for a great opportunity for your kids for a week or two of camp, this is it!

Classes

We have a new teacher! Welcome to Alexandra Fochi, a Brazilian native, and a woman of many talents. Born in Brazil and living in the U.S for 13 years, Alexandra has both a degree and career in electrical engineering and a second degree and career in the culinary arts. She is constantly improving her education and she recently moved to the West Coast to further her knowledge of wine. She is attending classes at Napa Valley College. She has worked as a line cook, a catering chef, and taught cooking at several schools around the country. She brings vast teaching experience and culinary savvy to our kitchen! Her first class, Brazilian Food, Fast & Easy, on Thursday the 16th of April, is going to be a crowd pleaser: The flavors of Brazil, and fast and easy techniques. Equipped with a pressure cooker and a microwave, Alexandra can show you how to turn out a meal in mere minutes—full of flavor and ingredients you might not yet have worked with, like Yucca!

I’m taking a little time off from scheduling public classes, but am always willing to put one together upon request—just gather a group of friends, and we’ll design your personal cooking adventure; how about a birthday party at the kitchen this year!

Rosetta Costantino has a bunch of new classes on the schedule, including Springtime in Southern Italy, on March 27th, where she will make one of the most amazing desserts—cakes that look just like fresh peaches (there’s a lovely picture on her website, cookingwithrosetta.com). She’ll make a seafood menu on April 3rd and feature a ricotta making and cooking class on April 24th. I won’t even mention her pizza class (well, I just did...) it’s sold out again—but you can get on a waiting list, and if she gets enough people, will schedule another section.

In the Market

What an exciting time! Spring onions, asparagus, tender pea shoots, super-sweet strawberries, and the best greens and winter squash and other winter veggies of the year. Plus citrus of every variety, of course. Green garlic is starting to show up too—that versatile version of the bulb, that doesn’t yet have papery segments. Mellow and mild, it makes wonderful savory flans, can be cooked with any vegetable, and works well in soups, too.

My Recipe of the Month is Green Garlic and Spring Onion Soup—a simple, fresh soup that you can make with your farmer’s market purchases.