I recently had the luxury of attending a Cooking Class at the Calphalon Culinary Center in Toronto, the class was specifically for Vietnamese food (yummy!) but they have many many more cooking classes. It was a fantastic experience and I would highly recommend it to anyone regardless of their level of cooking ability.

One of the things that I noticed first was how well organized the class environment was. Everything is prepared for you in advance: a booklet with your recipes, a shiny new pen, a white apron, wash cloths and an assortment of cooking tools straight from the shelves of Calphalon, which were a pleasure to work with. The moment you walk in you are presented with a treat, something wonderful to snack on as the rest of the students come into the class; the treats themselves are themed with the type of cooking lesson that you are attending and let me add – very tasty. The class environment is spacious and well thought out. Mirrors and television sets enable you to see the instructor from wherever you might be in the class. Although, considering that the size of the class is small it adds a wonderful element of closeness to the instructor that negates the need for the television sets and mirrors and allows for questions at a whim to be answered, more on that later though.

At first, I was rather nervous about entering the classroom as my level of cooking is rather amateur. The place itself is known Toronto-wide as a place of fine culinary arts and can create a feeling of anxiety in one’s own lack of skill. I can cook a rather mean box of Kraft Dinner or prepare a fabulous slice of WonderBread a la Ketchup – anything past that is just the luck of the draw. The teaching style is what made it comfortable and completely negated my anxiousness and allowed me to enjoy the experience. The lesson was taught from a perspective that the people in attendance are not experts and do not know what some of the finer things in cooking are. For example, cutting vegetables; I know it sounds simple, but there really is an art to it and the instructor taught us how with vigorous clarity.

The instructor himself was fantastic: a positive attitude, a great approach, with a very articulate and suitable humour. At some points he rambled on with questions from the rest of the class that I did not understand in the first place and seemed like affirmative filler, but for the connoisseurs in the class I’m certain it all made sense!

It was a fantastic experience and I am planning on doing the Mexican cooking class – so long as beans aren’t involved in any of the recipes.