Le Poisson, Le Poisson!

As I mentioned before, the boy and I attended a "Cooking for Two" class at L'Academie de Cuisine recently, which was my anniversary present. (He's good, huh? Make your girlfriend a) squeal with excitement AND b) a better cook!) I chose the seafood-themed class, as I am a sucker for ...well, anything with suckers, and the menu looked unbeatable: clams casino, honey-cured grilled salmon steaks, and a crab and corn chowder. Oh, and FLAN, because fish belongs everywhere except dessert. Yes, you can quote me on that.

Now, L'Academie runs a professional school, but we had signed up for the recreational one, so we stroll in to the chem-labish classroom at the Bethesda location right at the appointed time, expecting a relaxed evening of chopping and stirring and savoring lovely smells like we do at home. FYI for anyone planning to sign up for a class there: "recreational" is not the same as "relaxing." Oh, no.

Don't get me wrong. You will absolutely love it, but you'll be lucky to keep up with the instructor for the first hour of the three-hour class. She will show you how to stuff a clam (with the aforementioned compound butter), and you had better do it NOW, because soon as she's done, she's showing your partner how to "walk" a knife through an onion. Not that she was rude about it; she just worked fast and wanted us to learn as much as we could. (One small problem--if you don't do exactly as the instructor says, an assistant may come over and do it for you. I practically had to wrestle my knife out the hands of a very sweet woman who started out showing me how big the pieces of celeriac should be, and then tried to chop all my root vegetables for me.)

After the first hour or so everything slows down, the assistants pour the wine, and THEN you get to relax and savor lovely smells (for awhile, until the next big rush). They will do some things for you, but these were all small things that would have been impractical in large groups but easy enough in your own kitchen (for instance, we didn't get to mix our own marinades for the salmon steaks). Everything else is done at your workstation by you and your partner, including, of course, the eating. I think that was most people's favorite part, but mine was all the actual cooking, with the boy, of course. Chop! Stuff! Grill! Roast! Do dates get any better than this? I doubt it. (Unless you stuff them with gorgonzola.)