Help from you guys please....ideas and suggestions....re cooking classes.....

J

joanietoo

Well-known member
all this chat with Missy...I too am so being pinched by the recession

(NO JOB this season at all since my return from Africa)

that I am seriously worried what is going to happen here....

folk are still coming to stay as they have booked already but they are not spending as much on the fun, frivoulous things here...and not everyone can go out to eat every night anymore...

sooooo

I am thinking about these cooking classes wher by I take them to the market and home to cook etc..

BUT this is not Thailand, Sri Lanka etc where the food is exotic.....well not to me

BUT

I think it may be an appealing idea to some so I am asking your opinion on what kind of dishes you would like to learn...either at my home/kitchen or in their villas.....

I do not like the bland taste with hot sauce and stodgy stewy and many boned dishes we buy locally, however Suriname, Indonesian and local Creole are what is found here...

So any ideas on the subject????

TIA

 
It works in Italy and France and Greece(maybe contact Evelyn?), so I think it would work on Islands

as well. I surely would participate!

 
Love the idea! M&D just returned from the islands on Saturday. For dog sitting, they gave me

"a taste of caribbean cookbook" by Angela Spenseley. It looks wonderful! Are you familiar with it? I have quite a few cookbooks from the islands, and always enjoy them.

I think your plan would be successful; especially because of the contacts that you have developed in the area. Can't hurt to try it!!

Best,
Barb

 
Lotsa....

I had written a response before and the site seemed to go down just as I posted. Hope it doesn't repeat.

I would think that best bet would be condo renters as they have a chance to practise. YOu could advertise through the managers and dive shops as well as supermarkets.

I'd do only the local fare. Don't exactly know what local is to you but here's what it would have been to me:

-stew conch, including the cleaning
-curry goat
-rice n' beans
-coconut battered grouper
-patties, maaan
-curry chicken
-punkin in many ways
-heavy cake
-cabbage
-whole fish in foil (our way was to fill with tomatoes and herbs, then bake) But this is also fun to do as a beach BBQ. They are very poplular
-lots of ways of using PickPeppa sauce
-rum drinks
-plus all the unique vegetables: how they grow, how to clean, how to cook
-barracuda and how to tell if it's edible

 
What Marg said. That all sounds very exotic to me, and I'm sure the island produce would seem exotic

to tourists. I would think concentrating on the local seafood would be best. People are intimidated about cooking fish no matter where in the world they reside, and you could share your expertise.

Could you somehow combine a cruise with the cooking class, or do it on board? Not in choppy seas, however.

 
"Aki, rice, salt fish is nice... (Cue steel drum band)". I agree with Marg. When I visited the

Caribbean, many years ago, the most fascinating thing to me was the local food. I would leap at the chance to participate in local food classes and tastings if I visited again. Especially using local seafood. (Turtle and scrambled turtle eggs were so unusual. Are they still legal?) Keep us posted.

 
Here was something that inspired me but of course, I'm no where exotic....

Think folks would like to come to Nashville and have TRUE southern food like grandma made?

I'm having problems with the sound on this clip but it was a great piece on these deals where you actually eat in someone's home in Italy - they have a name for it but I can't remember what it was called so it's bugging me I can't get the sound on this.....

http://www.gourmet.com/diaryofafoodie/video/2008/01/103_italy_fullep

 
As someone suggested....seafood. I think of our seafood meals there so often, I wish I knew how to

make many of the things we ate.

 
In my first ditty, I mentioned that a beach BBQ is always fun for folks. A good way to learn how to

do fish, drink rum and just have a great time meeting people. So they could prepare the fish and veg with you, then meet up later on the beach around the fire.

Back in my old days in the Caribbean, when I was doing so much diving, my dive master and I became buddies above the water. We went fishing, carefully selecting the fish that were not reproducing at the time, and did his style of fish.

I've made it a few times for people who came to visit and they've all loved it. Very simple. But you probably have a special way of preparing there, that people would want to learn.

Another idea, depending on the volume of condo traffic, is to offer (to sell) small sizes of ingredients so that people don't lose an arm and a leg at the supermarkets buying 500 gm of something they will use once there, needing only 5 gm.

Oh, it all sounds so warm right now.

 
I've done exactly that in Mexico & Thailand. Sounds like a perfect fit!

In Mexico, I did a 5 day class at Los Dos cooking school in Merida. Martha Stewart just profiled David. He was living in NY, went to Mexico and bought a villa. Subsidizes the cost by doing cooking classes and renting out two rooms. The great thing is, when he has company coming or other plans, he just blocks out those dates and doesn't do classes!

In Thailand, same thing. The guy started doing market tours followed by a cooking class.

Personally, I'd much rather take a cooking class than eat out or do many of the other tourist things. I'd never find many markets on my own and I can't tell you how much it added to my enjoyment and understanding of the culture having a local who is fluent in English explain things to me.

Keep in mind, what is not exotic to you, can be extremely exotic to me. It's not until I moved away from the midwest that I had many of my first food experiences: mango, the variety of chiles, a raw avocado (seriously!), squid, octopus, etc. Even things like feta and balsamic vinegar were new to me. Sometimes I feel like I was living under a rock, but you know, that's how enriching a new place can be.

 
Thanx for the feed back...NOW.....please...there is no ......

other source hereabouts for me to work from...all I can find on the web (all over the world) is the offer to stay and cook and these are quite expensive...
I want to offer just a morning/days do...I do have a studio for one couple which we could do a longer stay at a later date but for now I am thinking just of a day thing.
Food is expensive here so I cant do it as cheaply as I see in Thailand for eg....

how much would you pay for:
1......pick up at 9.30am a drive to the market place......buy some foods...I will have to have other foodstufs either soaking (like salt fish)
Pass by a smallholding for some veg/salad and back to my house.....Cook and eat from 11.30am, finish 2pm......

AND who pays for the ingredients?...some of these like crayfish is quite expensive...
A BIG help/suggestion on this please...


2.....Then...how do they get away from my house....I dont want to hit the traffic and take them home...

3....I could do this in their villa/condo but so often I would have to lug loads of pots and pans...and then I would also have to wait till they finished eating to wash up/take my dishes home again.....(unless I use foil pans...could work for a few dishes).

The fish here is dubious because of siguatura, we get most frozen....also we use frozen conch a lot as it is fished out...crayfish is hard to buy at the market, I'd organize that through another source.......

I have this idea so far (very loose)...

Met with a rum/fruit drink and the recipe

Appertizer: Accras (salt fish balls...fried) with greens and dip. or Okra (lady fingers..fried)

Starter: Soup....pumpkin, sweet potato, or whatever.

Entree: Fish, crayfish, conch curry, chicken curry salad or whatever.

Dessert: Ummmmmm, there are a few to choose from.

We grow our own coconuts so I thought I could get the gardener to show them how to open one ...use it too...or drink from it.
We also grow some things we can pick but the garden is not prolific and does not produce loads for more than a few months.

This must be easy for them to do on their own....it must pay me to do this and give them a good outing and meal.

TIA

 
Marge.....you ahve so many great ideas...come and join me in this venture...

There are few places here to go to do one's own braai on the beach......but I could do one on the gas grill near the kitchen...(would need to buy a new one as this wee one I have is very wee and decrepit...but then it is very island style! smileys/smile.gif)

Tell me how to prepare the fish you mentioned.

I must have a few different types of courses to offer and one would be to wrap the pork (tenderloin for this, I think) in banana leaves they pick from my little palms and do that on the fire...what say you?

I would only need them to pay for the main ingredients (on top of the course charge???...I would supply all the small stuff)

 
We dont have the pickapepper as a regional sauce.....however...

we do have it of course but there are both Dutch (Indonesian) and Creole sauces that are quite unique and I would deff. use those. There is of course loads of spices at the market that they could buy if the wanted to......although I would have them for the course anyway.....I'm getting quite 'cited about this....

I just dont know if my place is, well,.... it is not all fresh and Disney clean like so many places where the visitors live/come from.

I have a thing about this, everything is Island style just because those are the builders/gardeners/wind, salt air, heat, lack of water/rain that is/are from here...urgh...

not Hawaii/tropical at all as I would like it to be.......beach, sea, sand, warm weather for out doors YES......
and we have no pool yet, just a ruddy great hole and with this economic turn we have to get our DD through her next 2 (last of 7) years of university....so the pool is on the back burner, sadly!

 
The small stuff idea was to allow them to make it again....back at the condo. Part of the plus of a

learning experience.

Yes, banana leaves are the perfect exotic idea. I think I've only done that once and must have had too much rum that night as I can't recall.

Some day, I"ll join you. And I'd love to help.

I'm still thinking about this as I had so much in the message that went nowhere when the site went down.

Thinking, thinking

 
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