Let food be fun!

  On my grocery list for last week were ingredients to make turkey tacos.  After making them I still had a lot of leftovers, so to prevent meal boredom I recreated my turkey tacos into baked tostadas, and they were super yummy!  Here's how I did it.....
   
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Place your tortillas on the baking sheet, brush with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt, black pepper, cumin, and chili powder.
Bake for approx. 5 mins. or until crisp, and golden brown.
Once cool, spread on guacamole, layer on top the seasoned ground turkey, iceberg lettuce, and garnish with salsa.

 Baked Tostada

Baked and seasoned flour tortilla with guacamole, taco seasoned ground turkey, iceberg lettuce, and homemade tomato-serrano salsa.

Mexican kitchen must have's...

    To always have on hand - Tortillas or tortilla chips, mexican spices (cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, oregano, black pepper, salt), fresh garlic.
     Ingredients to pick up - Meat (mine being ground turkey but can be anything you want), tomatoes, onion, avocado, limes, cilantro, peppers (depending on heat preferences you can choose anything from a bell pepper to a habenero)

Cooking Class: Simple Cuts, Ample Flavors

January ninth has finally come and gone after waiting for many months for this day to come.  Nothing extremely monumental happened yesterday except for the fact that I signed up for a cooking class at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, and was excited to finally take it.  Not only was I participating but my mom, cousin, my cousins girlfriend, and two friends of mine were taking it with me.  I took this cooking class as an opportunity to get friends and family together to have a good time and learn some new techniques and skills in the kitchen.  Food, friends, family, and fun...is there really anything better?!

On the menu for the day...

• Crostini of mascarpone and goat cheese topped with homemade grape chutney
• Coquilles St. Jacques
• Beef Daube
• Standard pasta dough
• Celery root-potato gratin
• Osso buco alla milanese
• Spinach salad with red wine vinegrette
• Poached pears with pomegranate glaze and caramelized almonds and vanilla ice cream 

We all had such a great time and our instructor was super knowledgeable, friendly, and very helpful.  He was more than happy to teach us how to make the given recipes along with offering to help assists us with any kitchen or food questions that may have been plaguing us.

 The class was about four hours in duration but not all classes are this long.  I recommend going onto their website and looking to see if any classes appeal to your taste. It is fairly inexpensive, depending on what class you'd want to take, and it is a great time!

Cambridge School of Culinary Arts


I, of course, need to share a recipe with you all so I decided that I wanted to post the recipe for the Red Wine Vinaigrette dressing. You may be thinking...." Liz...you just took a cooking class and all you want to share if a dressing recipe?!!?"  Tooshay..but..this recipe is extremely simple, very delicious and will be easy to incorporate into your daily life.  Get rid of those bottled dressings and make your own!

Red Wine Vinaigrette Dressing
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
Kosher salt to taste
1/4 cup shallots, minced
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

In a small bowl, whisk together red wine vinegar, salt, shallots, and mustard.  Then slowly incorporate the olive oil while whisking well to combine.  Season with black pepper.

Once everyone was done making their dishes we all got to celebrate the completion of the class by feasting on everything we created.

I strongly recommend taking a cooking class, I can't wait for my next one!