Cooking Class with the Family March 2010

Liz and Mike called and invited me to go to lunch at Catrow's Catering with Grandma Pat.  Located at 2300 East and 3300 South, in an unlikely venue for a catering/cooking school business, we ate at the single table near the front door.  The soups were delicious and they offered freshly made ginger lemonade.  Mom (Pat) was very interested in trying out the cooking class.  We four signed up and included Eric, Jody and Steve, and Lou. Our class was held March 2nd in the evening.

Our class was a New Orleans Mardi Gras menu.  We had shrimp bisque, crab cakes with aioli sauce, fried red tomatoes (green not available in the winter) and our dessert was bread pudding with Bailey's creme sauce.  The bread pudding was made first, as it had to cook for about 60 minutes.

After the bread pudding was safely cooking in the oven, we began the shrimp bisque by slicing shallots, celery and very strong onions.  We were all crying....

While we were slicing and dicing, Eric was assigned to make the "roux"-a paste made from softened butter, flour and garlic-to thicken the bisque.  We added oil to a heated frying pan-then the aromatic vegetables we had diced.