Kick The KD: So Far, So Good!

Dan    Ask Dan     calgary, cooking, Kick The KD, learning, participants, update

Well, we’re two weeks into our program and things have been going pretty well so far. There is a great dynamic between all of the participants, and the hands-on cooking, for the most part, has yielded some tasty results.

For the first week of lessons, we focused on making three pasta sauces: a tomato-based sauce, an alfredo sauce, and a pesto. Two were adapted from www.foodnetwork.ca and one from www.dansgoodside.com.

Everyone split up into groups to tackle their sauce recipes and reconvened after to assemble a lasagna together. All fared well, with the exception of the pesto, which ended up being a little bit too oily, but I attribute that to the blender not being quite up to the task. (Sorry Blender, if you’re reading this, but the true hurts…)

Homework for the first week consisted of taking one of the recipes we used and putting your own twist on it. Stacey and Ellen already posted last week about their homework success. Others, like Rand,experimented with dried mint in the tomato-parmesan sauce: ‘We use a lot of dried mint in family dishes…it added a nice touch.’ Ramez also tried the tomato-parmesan sauce, adding some bell peppers, but under-cooked the pasta…so…tasty? Not so much…Oh well, we live and we learn, right?

Moving on to week two, we set our focus to grains and cooked up some dishes with quinoa, millet, bulgur wheat, and couscous. As fun as boiling grains are, the participants had something much more exciting to look forward to this week: a knife skills lesson from Kevin Kent of Knifewear in Inglewood.

Kevin enthusiastically taught everyone (like Laura and Haley on the right there…) to chop potatoes, carrots, and oranges like pros. Meanwhile, the other groups watched grains boil away…How. exciting. Actually, most had never experienced some of the grains before (especially the millet and bulgur wheat), and were impressed by the ease in preparation, and the recipes’ final results!

All three recipes from this class were adapted from www.foodnetwork.ca, and were all hits. The couscous dessert recipe, in particular, was exceptional. This recipe, was originally featured on David Rocco’s Dolce Vita. Basically, it consists of couscous, nuts, raisins, and butter. We topped it with some brown sugar and butter sauce (we reasoned that the relative ‘healthiness’ of the base dessert could deal with some calories on top…) before devouring it. In my opinion, it was a tastier, simpler version of rice pudding, but, hey, that’s just me. The picture below doesn’t really do it justice, so you’ll just have to take my word on this one, but I feel as though a variation is going to show up on this site very soon!

After dessert, we wrapped up class number two. Homework for the week? Take one of the grains we used in class and incorporate it into a dish that normally calls for rice. Since it’s currently reading break, we decided to take a week off from Kick The KD so the students could, well, read? We’ll be back next Thursday with a focus on breakfast. You know, the meal that most students sleep through.

Check back soon for more Kick The KD updates!

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