Teaching my very first cooking class

[mizducky]

So I went and did it. I have volunteered to teach my very first cooking class.

I'm calling it "Healthy Gourmet Cooking"--yes, I'm basically getting my little obsession together and taking it on the road. I've also wanted to teach a cooking class for awhile now, and just to get back into adult-ed teaching in general, which I have greatly enjoyed in the past. I think I can do this okay, with proper planning. But of course I can't resist putting this out on eGullet for kibbitzing purposes.

(Oh yeah, and you better believe I'm using eGullet as a resource. So far I've really gotten a lot out of Malawry's last blog. And I know there's more stashed away here.)

This class would be at the organo-groovy church I belong to--they have a broad approach to adult-ed fare--which means I have an intergenerational audience. So I'm encouraging youth and novices to attend. If it does come off--I set a minimum required registration of four--it'll happen in July or August. Maybe not the best weather to be hovering over a stove in SoCal, but I'll work with it. Oh yeah, I set the class maximum at ten.

Most importantly for planning purposes, I will be allowed to charge some kind of materials fee to cover ingredients and such. One of the first things I need to do is figure out my budget, so I know how much that fee should be. And to figure out my budget, I need to figure out my lesson plan.

I do have a tentative lesson plan in my head--leaning heavily on recipes I'm really comfortable with, and hopefully suited to the season. Here's what I've been thinking so far:

Session 1: Intro stuff, plus the pico-de-gallo-ish chopped salad I did for my food blog

Session 2: Roasted-vegetable ratatouille topped with parmesan

Session 3: A basic stirfry, featuring marinated tofu and shiitake mushrooms

Session 4: Tabbouli, and baba ganoush with variations

The dish for the first class is intentionally a little lower-impact so I can spend time on intro stuff--I want to do the getting-to-know-you what-I-want-out-of-this-class kind of thing, plus some basics about nutrition. Plus I want to allow time for hands-on remedial knife skills if needed. I do *not* have pro knife skills, but I know enough to prevent drawing blood most of the time.

I plan to have snacks available when people arrive, because many will be coming straight from work and will not have had time to grab dinner--plus it's an opportunity to teach about healthy snack choices. I'm thinking of asking all students to bring a knife and small cutting board of their own, because I know the church kitchen's knives are few and pathetic, and I don't own enough to go around (it's okay with me if those knives and boards are inexpensive, as long as they're adequate to get the job done). I'm also going to do an advance survey to find out about any special dietary or health concerns.

I need to do a more intensive survey of the kitchen in the classroom where I'll be teaching this. I think the appliances are all okay, it's just the cookware that'll suck. I'll probably be able to stash some of my own cooking gear somewhere on-campus, so I don't have to be hauling heavy metal back and forth every class.

Hopefully, much more to come. Kibbitzing welcome, especially on other factors I should take into account as I plan this thing.

Edited May 12, 2006 by mizducky (log)

[fou de Bassan]

mizducky,

What a great opportunity to share your knowledge! Regarding snack food, why not make some of the night's dishes ahead of time? That way your participants will know what to look for in a final result and encourage them to duplicate the recipe at home.

I hope you have lots of fun with this!

[JAZ]

This sounds like a great idea. I think your menu ideas sound good -- fairly simple but tasty.

If you haven't taught cooking classes before, I think one of the main things to plan out is the timing. When I taught my first class, I went way over my time limit, just because I didn't really take into consideration two things: the questions I got during the class, plus how long it would take to actually make things. (And that was after I'd been assisting with classes for a couple of years -- I thought I knew enough, but assisting is one thing; teaching is another.) The second class I did much better, and by the third I had it down pretty well. But if I'd just done a dry run of the first class, I think I could have timed it much better. So I'd suggest doing a trial run of the first lesson on a roommate or friend -- just so you get a feel for actually doing the demonstation parts of the classes.

It sounds as if you're planning to teach this as a hands-on class, right? Will you have help cleaning up? Will the students clean, too? Teaching a class is pretty tiring, and if you have to clean everything up alone afterwards, you'll be exhausted. So get a volunteer or two -- maybe offer a free class to someone if they help you clean up. If you can get someone to help get everything prepped before the class, do that too.

Those are the first things that come to mind. I'm sure I'll think of more as the discussion advances.

[anzu]

Some more questions:

How much time do you have overall for each class?

Are you demonstrating first, and then having them make it, or having them make it in groups while you go from group to group and troubleshoot? (I've done this both ways, and both have their advantages, but the time required varies greatly for the two methods).

Definitely you need to look at how much time is needed for:

- talking about ingredients/methods etc.

- food preparation

- consuming the food (expect this to take longer than planned. I always found a kind of party atmosphere appeared, and everyone tended to eat more slowly). Then again, I've always taught classes where at least four dishes were cooked per class, so this might be different with your class.

- clean up afterwards

A couple more things to remember:

Remind the group to bring plastic containers for taking leftovers home.

Handouts with the recipes printed out on them.

An alternative approach to how to treat the budgeting and ingredients issue (suggested because of your mobility problems).

When I've taught, I've always used public transport, and therefore lugging ingredients, utensils, etc. for a whole group just wasn't practical. One approach to save your own sanity is to have a short meeting with the participants first (you can use this time to find out about their dietary etc. concerns), and at that time give out a list of what is to be brought and in what quantity. (Though I would bring anything really unusual or difficult to track down).

That way, x can volunteer to bring tomatoes, y brings eggplant, z brings olive oil to each class, etc. Each brings the receipt with them, then you tally it up on the spot and divide by the number of participants. Each participant also has the phone number of at least one other participant so that, if for some reason, they can't make it to class, an alternative person will bring the ingredient they should have brought.

My students always complained about this at first - often they'd done cooking classes before and had not had to do this kind of work. However, when they did it, they realized that it was a good experience in learning where and how to pick out the best produce. I ended up with students really enthused by this and swapping tips on where to buy the best whatever...

[Shalmanese]

Theres a couple of tips in my Professor Shalmanese's 2 week cooking school thread. Feel free to steal some inspiration from there if you want.

[Milagai]

Please update later with the feedback you get?

Shalmanese: what did your friend have to say after

all that amazing shopping and cooking?

Went home a happy new cook? Or resolved

to visit you more often but continue to open cans at home?

Curious....

Milagai

[Carolyn Tillie]

Very important concept in teaching cooking classes: Mise en place!

Meaning, having EVERYTHING pre-cut and pre-measured. Get to the point where literally the ONLY thing you are doing in the class (while you are talking) is assembly and heating. Most people aren't taking a cooking class to learn how to chop vegetables -- they already have their own method so why waste their time doing prep?

Sounds like you are being ambitious with four courses and if you need to wait for folks to prep their food, it will actually take considerably more time than you are anticipating. If they come in with some basic ingredients already prepped for them, you can get right to cooking and instructing them on technique and recipes.

I am just thinking about the one-off classes I've attended and taught, versus the on-going classes I've attended and taught. If you have a series of classes set up and you are going to see these folks every week for four or six weeks, then spending time teaching knife technique would be important. But for a single experience, I would suggest sparing your attendees the prep-time.

[mizducky]

Much thanks for the thoughtful replies, folks! I really appreciate it.

First a clarification. I see I was insufficiently clear in my first post, and left the impression that I might be planning to do all of those dishes on a single evening. Yikes! Even I'm not that crazy!!!

I put in for this class to run for four sessions on four separate nights (not sure yet whether that'll be weekly, or every other week, that depends on how the RE director works out the calendaring for all the classes during this quarter). So--each class is two hours long, probably running from 7:00pm to 9:00pm. In other words, in that tentative outline of sessions I listed in my initial post:

Session 1: Intro stuff, plus the pico-de-gallo-ish chopped salad I did for my food blog

Session 2: Roasted-vegetable ratatouille topped with parmesan

Session 3: A basic stirfry, featuring marinated tofu and shiitake mushrooms

Session 4: Tabbouli, and baba ganoush with variations

←

...each session represents a separate two-hour-long class on one of four successive evenings.

Now, I *think* two hours to work on a single dish from start to finish (okay, the 4th session is two dishes, but easy ones), plus eating plus cleanup plus talking should be manageable. One thing I do know from previous experience teaching other (non-food) classes is that two hours for an evening adult ed class is pretty much the upper limit for many people's attention spans. I'm not inclined to push that, even if in this case I'm offering a food reward. So I really hope to make this work in a two-hour-per-session timeframe, and I don't think I can get much simpler than one dish per session.

Alas, while having everyone do the ingredient-shopping for me sounds really attractive, I'm afraid it probably won't work in this situation because people will be coming directly from work (and possibly fighting their way through a lot of rush-hour traffic, depending on where they're coming from). Buying their ingredients between leaving work and arriving at class might be challenging for a lot of people. And I have bad visions about somebody buying their ingredient several days in advance so that it wilts, and perhaps leaving their ingredient to bake in a hot car trunk all day before class.

Plus, frankly, I confess I'm just a little too much of a control queen about shopping for ingredients. I just don't want the success of the class to be undone by somebody buying substandard or wrong ingredients, or mistreating those ingredients before arrival. Maybe once I'm sure folks are sufficiently trained up on the difference between cilantro and Italian parsley, and how to find a non-crappy eggplant in this town ... Remember, this is a class open to novices; plus I've learned not to expect too much of the culinary skills of even bright and talented people.

Anyway, I'm not overly worried about shlepping ingredients by myself, as there's a disabled parking spot really close to the classroom where I'll be teaching this, and I've got a little wheeled hand-cart gizmo to roll my stuff from car to classroom.

As to the mise-en-place issue: I really *want* my students to do all their own mise-en-place, for several reasons:

1) I find a major reason many people don't like to bother with any kind of cooking more involved than throwing a prepackaged meal in the microwave is that they think all the chopping and slicing and stuff is a huge bother. By having them do the whole dish from start to finish, without all the mise magically done for them, they'll have an exact idea how much effort and time are really involved, and hopefully get the impression that it isn't really all that heavy after all.

2) I really want them to experience what I think of as the zen of food prep, that kind of meditative focus one can get from such types of simple handwork--after all, this is an organo-groovy kinda church I'm teaching this for (there's already a long-running "Spirituality of Handwork" course in the curriculum), so I think people will really groove on that concept.

3) The dishes I picked--in fact, a lot of dishes I make--are pretty much all about the mise-en-place--the first dish in fact is *nothing* except mise. And in several cases, the mise has to be done just-so in order for the dish to come off right. So the mise is not IMO a yawner but an essential part of the learning experience.

As to the class process: I'm planning to have everyone work together as a single team on one big batch of the dish of the evening. The way I envision this working: everyone will have a handout in advance with the full recipe, plus associated supplemental info (everything from nutrition and health benefits to technique tips to hints for shopping for any unfamiliar ingredients--my aim is to be emailing this material for all four sessions in advance of the first meeting). We'll get down to it at the stroke of 7:00--I'll assign mise tasks to each student so that everybody's chopping something, while I provide assistance as needed; I'll do some talking while we're all chopping.

Then we'll all adjourn to the stove; there will only be one person doing the at-stove cooking at any given moment, but everyone else will be watching (might be a tough fit if I get my maximum registration of 10 students, but I think I can make that work). Then we'll eat (actually, we'll have been eating all along, as I'll have provided some snacks at the beginning to tide people over) and have discussion. And then we'll all jump on the cleaning and packing out leftovers and whatnot (actually, I'm also a big bug about clean-as-you-go, so we'll have been cleaning up after ourselves throughout the evening and hopefully won't have much left to do at the very end).

Obviously this pattern will have variations depending on the dish of the evening--for instance, that first-night chopped salad requires no cooking; my roasted-veg ratattouille (I better learn how to spell that reliably by the time the class happens! ) has a two-step cooking process; and for the last session there are different cooking tasks going on at different times (an opportunity to talk about how to juggle cooking multiple dishes for a single meal). But the general strategy of group cooperation will be the baseline.

Alas, I'm not sure I'll be able to draft anybody to be my guinea-pig for a full-fledged dress rehearsal with audience. But I am at the very least planning to do some dry runs once I've got my individual class outlines worked out, to double-check timing and procedures.

More kibbitizing is always welcome ... and I'll definitely keep you all posted as things move along.

(Edited to fix tyops. )

Edited May 14, 2006 by mizducky (log)

[gfron1]

In response to your response to the response...whenever I've done sushi classes, I always have everything pre-cut, BUT I too wanted them to have the opportunity to do their own cutting. So, I had everything that I need pre-cut and gave them some token cutting opportunities. The first time I did a class I cut in front of them (as they cut) and found that it was way too much to manage. Have those magical bowls of pre-cut under the table ready to magically appear just like on TV - waalah!

Have fun!

[JAZ]

A couple of notes about organization:

Even though you'll have everyone work on the preparation, don't forget to give yourself time to unload the groceries, wash the produce and divide it into bowls/baskets/piles so everything they'll need is ready for them to work on.

You'll also want to do things like fill a couple of bowls with some salt for seasoning, get your spices ready to be measured (if you're not pre-measuring), and make sure that anything your liquid ingredients (oil, soy sauce, etc) are in containers that are easy to manage (i.e, not the two gallon Costco cans).

With everyone working on the prep, you'll need lots and lots of prep bowls of all sizes, and also several sets of measuring spoons and cups -- how well is the kitchen stocked?

You mentioned having people bring their own knives and cutting boards; given that they're coming from work, you might want to invest in a package or two of the flexible plastic cutting boards so they don't have to. They're only $7 or so for a package of 4, and since you can charge a materials fee, it might be worth it. I've found that they work pretty well if you put a damp towel or paper towel underneath to keep them stable. Then you can keep them, or donate them to the kitchen.

As for the content of the class, one thing to spend some time on in your class (which you're probably already planning to do) is the role of seasoning, especially salt, in cooking. I've found in my classes that even fairly experienced cooks really don't know what they're tasting for when the directions say "salt to taste." Letting them taste a dish after adding salt in several stages is an eye-opening experience for many of them.