If the meals you prepare at home need an intervention, a culinary boot camp will kick your cooking up a notch.
Nicole Harrison Hamilton’s Liaison College of Culinary Arts says people typically stick to the same small assortment of meals that they’ve been preparing for years. They get into a culinary rut and aren’t enjoying their experience in the kitchen.
“What we do here at our culinary boot camp, is take those standard menus and we enhance them so that people can challenge themselves with new ideas, new products and have more fun in the kitchen,” explains Harrison.
The 13-week program that runs Wednesday nights from 7 to 10, is a condensed version of the school’s diploma program. Participants learn basic skills needed in the kitchen, how to prepare everything from soup to sauce with vegetables, meat, fish poultry and dessert in between as well as the proper use of seasonings. Plate presentation is another element of the culinary arts that is on the course menu.
“Most of our people that are here are going to be entertaining at home and what better way to have your guests ‘oo and ah’ than to say you prepared it yourself,” suggests Harrison.
The course content can also include special dietary needs, depending on demand. Harrison recalls a recent session that included two women with a gluten allergy. The experience was a real eye-opener for the liaison chef and participants as they discovered the challenges of making bread without traditional grains.
Aside from getting their cooking in shape, the boot camp offers participants a real social experience, says Harrison. Husbands and wives sign up together and in some cases, one spouse will send the other along to the course on their own. A newlywed couple who took the course had been signed up as a gift from their wedding attendants.
“It’s a great atmosphere. Not only are they learning but they are enjoying each other’s company and having some great laughs,” Harrison says, adding that couples often share kitchen duties these days.
For more about Liaison College of Culinary Arts, go to the website at www.liaisonhamilton.com.
