I did, however, have an experience today that I just can't really pass on sharing. I took a cooking class at ABC Cooking - a chain cooking school targeted at young women who want to be outstanding home-makers, or who feel they need to brush up on some of the basic cooking skills so as to be better wives. It was an interesting experience.
The cooking skill is women only. You have to bring your own apron, slippers and hand towel, everything else is provided.
My friend recently joined the school and today was a free trial lesson, so she invited me to go with her. We were learning how to make roll cakes. Everything we got was pre-measured and we were guided through the cooking process by one of the school's expert cooks - an extremely cheerful young woman who was concerned I might not know what a spatula was (to be fair, they probably do get women who have never seen a spatula before). She also seemed very disappointed that I knew what a flour sifter was. That I can understand - flour sifters are clearly an imported tool, and to be honest I only ever used one in my middle school home-ec class.
The recipe we made was highly involved and "required" a number of techniques that were cool, but probably not even remotely necessary. We did learn that if you slowly mix cold whipping cream into warm melted white chocolate before whipping it, you get a nice dense, delicious whipped cream. After filling and rolling our cake, we were also shown how to make little rounded egg-shaped daubs of whipped cream with a pair of spoons. This then served as a base to stick fruit and chocolate to the top fo the cake.
At the same time, the class sharing the long work station with us was learning how to gut a fish with chopsticks. Which was horrifying and kind of awesome at the same time. By the time they finished their fish and clam sautee it did smell absolutely delicious.
When we were done decorating our slices of roll cake (we each got to take home 3 slices), they were whisked away to the refrigerator and we got the sales job. $450 for 6 classes was the starting package (on sale for $350 if I commit right away), and you could only take one class per month (each month featured four "menus" you could learn how to make). Presumably they are counting on you wanting to take more than one per month and pay for more out of pocket. There are also a variety of bonus lessons if you bring a friend.
So more than I can afford right now, anyway. It would be hard to justify the expense for recipes that seem to include a lot of specialize equipment and ingredients that I don't want to buy. Maybe someday, though. It was a fun way to practice Japanese.
What I really want to do is sneak into their kitchen at night and use all their awesome tools and facilities to make my own recipes.
