Cooking Class

After beignets. we headed to St. Louis Street to take a cooking class at the New Orleans School of Cooking. Yes, super tourist-y, but it was fun! And yes, there was a "general store" out front where you could buy all the spices and mixes that are ever so conveniently mentioned in class.

Our teacher was actually reasonably good about not over-promoting. His name was Kevin, aka Big Kev, and he has a restaurant in the Hilton called Lil' Dizzy's Cafe. He was a funny dude. Kept us entertained as he made first a coconut bread pudding (so it could bake in the oven), then gumbo, jumbalaya and finally pralines. He cooked up on a stage kitchen that had a big mirror over it so you could see what he was doing, and we sat at round tables of eight or so covered in checkered cloths. Big Kev was really casual with the measurements and everything -- drove the Virginia ladies at our table crazy. They kept asking how many cups of this and that, and he just laughed at them. It was funny.

YUM, the food was good! Especially the gumbo and pralines, in my opinion. I can't wait to try my hand at them at home. :)


Us in the mirror over the cooking area.


Big Kev in the process of making a jumbo portion of the jumbalaya in a cooker so big it looked like an Airstream.


The gumbo. Do you know why gumbo's so brown like that? I had no idea -- the base is a "roux," or flour cooked and browned in oil. That's what makes it so thick and tasty.


Jumbalaya, served with Abita root beer. Real Abita beer was being served too, but I opted to keep it PG.


The bread pudding, with praline on the side. He made the pralines look so easy!