I love to eat; it’s on the brain 24/7 but when it comes down to cooking. I don’t have a clue. Thankfully, I’m slowly getting there with learning the skills for the culinary world. I’m privileged to get the opportunities to attend many cooking master classes but never a full day at a cookery school. I’ve been to Food at 52 Cookery School for Olive it event with Jose Pizarro.
One Saturday morning I came along back to Old Street for a Spanish tapas cooking class. I had the Spanish fever since even before I went to Barcelona last year. We made a great selection of mouth-watering dishes and ate as we cooked; it was hard to go home on a full stomach and wine.
John the owner and chef opened up the cookery school back in 2007 after many years of running a film set building. He is also made the oak wooden and marble tables at Food at 52. He was there to greet me at 11am in the morning, upstairs is homely, relaxed environment with a cool lounge filled with cookbooks and artefacts.
Slowly each attendee arrived and I was usher downstairs for some tea and coffee, there was birthday party group, people who travelled from Wales, novices and regulars who have been to John’s classes before.
The very first dish we created was the Spanish chocolate truffles, as it needed to be in the freezer for 1 hour. The hidden twists is using an olive pate, and believe me this odd ingredient actually works with the flavour combinations.
Next we blitzed our own tomato sauce for our stuff squid, ingredients is simply plum tomatoes and garlic. For the filling of squid, it’s even more garlic, onions, serano ham; some people struggled stuffing the squid. I found it fun and made it look easy, threading a cocktail stick at the top.
The next dish to prepare is the super easy potato with chorizo and olives. One of favourite dishes and it’s so simple to make. The saltines from the chorizo flavours up the dish and the two magic ingredients of sherry vinegar and paprika adds hidden depth.
The next two dishes tasted amazing together, king prawns with caper berries and peppers with vegetarian paella. Now I know paella takes a lot of time and effort, whatever a big or small pan it takes 20 minutes.
Did you know saffron is even more expensive then gold?
Anyways we all seem curious what type of caper were used as it had a kick every time we bit into it. Turns out the red pepper added the punch.
Lastly to end our Spanish tapas feast was the braised chicken with manzanilla olive sauce. We all thought olives would be too strong but in the end you could barely taste it. Chicken was cooked super tender and skin fell off with a drag of a fork.
This is my second time at Food at 52 Cookery school, and both times the food I cooked turned out amazing. I couldn’t believe how easy the dishes were to cooked, and have already recreated the potato salad dish at home. Cost of a classes ranges from £115 onwards.
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London
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