Stories from Spain: Cooking Class

By Luis Carrera-Lara, 2019 cohort

That day was full of surprises and fun. It started off with all of us afraid that it was going to be really boring or that all we would cook extremely simple things like just scramble a egg and make a piece of toast. When we entered, we were all kind of taken back when saw this full blown clean kitchen. Everything looked new and appealing to all of us. The chef was also a skilled and patient person seeing that most of weren’t exactly Master Chef Junior quality.

It was interesting to cook with him because he did a teach as you go approach and because of that it didn’t feel like we were just copying him. Also, the recipes he decided to include where ones that were complex enough that it required multiple people to complete them. At the end of the day we enjoyed Tortilla Española along with Empanadillas and for dessert had Galletas del Pueblo. The most recent cooking class we had was also fun. That was because this time we cooked more heavy dishes than last time and those required more steps than the last meal. During that cooking class, we had the same teamwork and finished pretty quickly compared to the very first time. The one thing that was different from the first time was that now we were cooking with very jumpy oil. Because of that while we were stirring, we would occasionally feel the little drops of oil landing on our skin and laugh at each other as we flinched. To conclude that cooking class we all sat down around the table like last time and ate the food that caused some us a little bit of pain.