Meetup#174: Beginner/Intermediate Cooking Class (1) Fillet Mignon, Sides & Wine!

Hi, everyone,

The address information was sent twice to the attendees only. See you tomorrow.

Sally

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The venue was scheduled to be a house in Torrance, but the owner lady's father recently passed away and she needed to be out of country. So, I asked around and our member, Eugene, in Sherman Oaks came as a rescue :-) Thank you so much, Eugene!

The address is going to be sent to the attendees with payment only. Now that the new venue is secured, I would like to ask you to revise your RSVP. His place is on Sepulveda Blvd., near Sherman Oaks, and if you won't be able to make it because it was changed from Torrance to Sherman Oaks, please let me know.

And for the members who RSVPed as "Maybe," please revise your RSVP ASAP as I'm not going to allow Maybe RSVP any more after tomorrow night. If I don't hear from yes RSVP with payment, the spot will be given to the members on the waitlist. (I'll contact the Maybe people individually too)

Thank you for your cooperation, and see you soon!

Sally

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It was kind of ironic that the members who replied to my questionnaire on basic cooking skills were mostly intermediate cooks answering Yes to the most questions. Contrary to my expectation, novice cooks were so silent! Sorry, did I intimidate you, perhaps?! I hope not... Anyways, to the members who replied, thank you very much for your feedback, and I'll reflect your requests in future classes.

Because of the finding, the chef and I decided to hold a cooking class aimed for both beginners and intermediate cooks, and hopefully members with various skill levels can come at ease and enjoy the meal together.

The chef's name is Ms. Maureen Dath, a charming young lady who's a Le Cordon Bleu graduate with honors and a professional chef. Please see her bio below....Originally from Belgium, she speaks French fluently, so I asked her to have a French cooking lesson in French language later too! (What about 4 basic French sauces, par exemple, peut-etre?!)

Being from Belgium, she's also big on mussels! She used to be a chef at a restaurant specializing in Belgian mussels with 100 different mussels dishes...So we can learn a number of ways to cook them from her in the future, too!!!

Besides, she can teach Italian food (like pasta from scratch) and baking as well. Aaah, isn't it exciting?! :-) Another thing that I came up with is that she'll come as my guest to future dining meetups so that we can have meals with her, interacting and asking her questions about food and cooking! Now, I'm really thrilled! Any restaurant suggestions?!

Well, I got so excited I couldn't help but post this event now!! lol

I'm still negotiating with a few venues, but the date is tentatively set for Sun. Nov. 1, at 2pm (for 3 hours.)

I'll inform more details as soon as I finalize the venue. But if you'd like to attend, please show your interest now by signing up yes or maybe. If you want to open your kitchen for this event, please let me know~!! :-)

The menu will be:

1. Filet Mignon!
2. White wine and mushroom cream sauce
3. Haricots verts (Sauteed green beans)
4. Smashed potatoes ("a hearty variant on the more well known mashed potatoes. One clear difference is that smashed potatoes are generally prepared with the skins on, creating a bit more chunkiness to the finished dish." https://www.wisegeek.c... )
5. Simple salad

It's another hands-on class (maybe we'll cook together in teams), but if you just want to watch, that's fine too.

The class size is for 8-12 people max (depending on the venue..), and $35 per person with instruction, recipes and a full course meal. I'm allowing to bring 1 guest. I'll also want to include two affordable bottles of wine that go well with the meal. Any suggestions on which wine to purchase, anybody?!

Hope you'll like the idea,

Sincerely,

Sally

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~Chef Maureen Dath's bio~

Maureen Dath was born and raised in Mons, Belgium. She first learned to cook by spending a lot of time in a kitchen with her father and grandmother who strongly believed in the importance of family sitting down at the table together to appreciate good food.

Growing up Maureen began to travel but it was her passion for food that carried her to taste and experience different foods from various regions and countries. In order to allow herself to travel she began working in restaurants where she started to learn how to run the front of the house. But despite her position as a server, she always found herself curious and spending a lot of time in the kitchen with the chefs asking questions about every dish and sauce.

She eventually went to work at the Anaheim White House for four years where she not only perfected her fine dining serving skills but also learned the ins and outs of a successful and high-end catering company as catering manager and event planner/coordinator.

She shortly after enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu where she graduated with honors and was introduced to Executive Chef Mirko Paderno who she has worked with over the course of the last two years. She started off by making fresh pasta and working pantry for six months at All'Angelo in Hollywood. He then opened up another restaurant on the Sunset Strip named Crudo where she was given the position of Crudo Chef and Sous Chef and learned to work with raw food. She left Crudo to work with Executive Chef Jared Simons at Bardot in Hollywood where she learned California fusion type dishes. But it did not take long for her to rejoin forces with Mirko who hired her to help open Cecconi's Beverly Hills and gave her the position of Cecchetti Chef.

Maureen returned to Belgium when her grandfather fell ill and passed away but she took this time to work at L'Olive Noire to learn the difference between back of the house work in Belgium and California. Maureen loves cooking and experiments a lot in her own kitchen to come up with new inventive dishes by taking her grandmother's traditional home cooking and adding her own personal touches. All in all, she feels that between her father and grandmother's skills she has some very big shoes to fill.