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Welcome to Yet Another Cooking Blog.

As you may have guessed, this is a blog about cooking - in particular my cooking. It has been mentioned to me several times that I seem a little obsessed with food, so I have decided to blog about my menus, my successes, my failures and anything else that springs to mind

Sunday 20 February 2011

Cooking class - Mexican

Todays cooking class (the last in my four christmas present classes) was in mexican cuisine.  it was held at El Rio in Macclesfield.  This was a smaller class than the others I had attended, as there were only 8 students participating.

On arrival I was offered a margarita (well, I couldn't refuse!).  The restaurant is closed on sundays, so the owner who is also the chef was teaching the class.

After introductions, we had an initial talk on some of the ingredients used in mexican cooking, in particular the smoky chipotle paste (a recipe for the paste was supplied in our information packs).  We then started with a quick session on knife skills and then prepared our vegetables for the dishes we were going to be making - refried beans, salsa and a chicken burrito (the two people who only ate fish made swordfish burritos).

The first dish we made was the refried beans, using beans that the chef had already soaked and cooked the night before (although tinned pinto beans are more than acceptable).  Once we had made these, we started cooking the sauce for the burrito as the flavours needed to intensify before we added our marinated chicken.  Throughout the class, chef was describing how the ingredients are used, the use of chillis, the chipotle paste, the use of oregano and also how these foods are often eaten in mexico.  Once we had put the chicken into the sauce to cook through (the meat had been pre-cooked, but needed warming through) we made out salsa.  The burrito's were then wrapped and packaged for us to take home and bake.  As there was lots of filling left over, chef warmed some corn and wheat tortillas so that we could eat the rest of our dish.

There was a very good atmosphere at this class, and chef was very helpful, so I would advise it for anyone wanting to get into mexican food and make something other than mexican food with a kit.

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