H loves to cook and is very good. He wants to take a one to several months course for adults noncredit. It needs to be in English. The knowledge is for fun cooking at home. He has taken local cooking classes (one day a week for several weeks) in Chinese cooking from a local person and 3 days Italian cooking from a famous chef who came to Aspen. These were really fun and helpful. Now he will be having more time to learn and explore cooking styles. I would be interested in taking baking/pastry classes if offered at the same time.
We looked at Cordon Blue (certificate but too technical and a starter at 3 months) and CIA (very short courses) in the USA. He is open to all types of cooking. He would however eventually like to learn more French cooking and more California style and Mediterranean style cooking. He is not interested in a lot of wine information or technical use of knives, etc. Places in the USA/ Canada/ Europe would be good.
Ideas?
Honestly, I would just invest in cookbooks, watch some Food TV shows, and dive in. Marcella Hazen’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking probably has enough to keep him going for months. I successfully made her homemade fettucini noodles with a pasta roller machine, first time I tried. This book is like Julia Child only better.
http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X
Paul Prudomme’s Lousiana Kitchen and Seasoned America are both incredible “teaching books”. Heavy on techniques and detailed detailed recipes. Seasoned America is a collection of classic American regional dishes from around the country. Best New England clam chowder I’ve ever eaten. At $5 for the Kindle version, it’s a no-brainer.
http://www.amazon.com/Chef-Paul-Prudhommes-Louisiana-Kitchen/dp/0688028470
http://www.amazon.com/Chef-Paul-Prudhommes-Seasoned-America-ebook/dp/B007BC2WRY
Victor Sodsook’s True Thai is a ridiculously good primer on Asian ingredients, how to buy them, how to use them. I was making Thai curry dishes with homemade curry pastes starting with dried chiles. Awesome. Awesome cookbook for learning how to cook.
http://www.amazon.com/True-Thai-The-Modern-Cooking/dp/0688099173
I don’t know if they are aired, but I learned more about cooking from Bobby Flays original cooking show, Hot off the Grill. 30 minutes just standing at counter cooking one meal. It aired every day for a couple of years. Seeing the techniques made it easy to deal with his recipes, both from the Food Network site and his cookbooks: I don’t recall ever having a failure from any of his cookbooks and that includes some crazy hard recipes like:
**Blue Corn Tortilla Crusted Crab Cake in Spicy Carrot-Mango Broth and Mango-Green Onion Relish
Read more at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/blue-corn-tortilla-crusted-crab-cake-spicy-carrot-mango-broth-mango-green-onion-relish-recipe.html**
http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/hot-off-the-grill-with-bobby-flay/episodes.season-3.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPBZOZTdSwQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipil8fNpHSg
Interested- will pass this great info to H. I think he is looking for the travel/social/adventure part of it too. D1’s H loves to cook pizza and he found a one-on-one cook in a small town in Italy with whom he spent a week learning his technique in this guys incredible home kitchen. This was while they lived and worked in Germany.
When you find one, please share. That’s on DH 's bucket list. Mine too!
Boston University has a well regarded certificate program. http://www.bu.edu/foodandwine/culinary-arts/ Jacques Pepin often teaches there, as did Julia Child when she was alive. Boston is a great city to spend some time in too.