Saturday morning and I again took part in assisting with the consumer education classes.

Things were a bit more straight-forward this time, at least in the beginning. There were also more assistants, thank goodness. First, we pulled all the ingredients for the consumers and placed them on sheet trays for them to work off of. We also did a tray for the chef instructor, Chef Alexx Guevara.

Of course, for his tray we not only had to pull the ingredients, we had to prep them, which meant dicing vegetables, mincing garlic, etc. No one wanted to do that part of it. Perhaps because they feared their cuts would be critiqued or they might get it wrong. So I ended up dicing the onions, zucchini, carrots and etc. Later on I was pretty happy when Chef Guevara noted the uniformity of the cuts and pointed it out to his class (though he didn't know who had cut them).

Arturo, whose station is across from mine in class, helped with mincing the garlic. This was his first time assisting, so he minced the garlic for everyone, not just Chef Guevara. Oh well.

The other assistants were sent to help Chef Perez run a "Day in the Life" class in the beginning kitchen lab. This is where people who are considering attending the school can come in and take what is essentially a one day class to get a taste of the education (literally and figuratively). Well, all except that part about having to wash dishes. The kitchen lab was full, so it was pretty chaotic over there.

Luckily, Arturo and I only had to assist Chef Guevara's dozen consumer students. We simply answered any questions they had and helped them with certain aspects of their prep, such as properly dicing a zucchini. Chef Guevara was in and out of the classroom since he was dealing with the movie premiere that was taking place in the front. So, Arturo and I got to answer and assist the consumer students. It was actually quite fun.

Chef Guevara's demo took place after the students had a chance to prep most of their ingredients. The students worked in groups of three or four to make the recipes, so they can usually get it done pretty quick. The recipes were Rice Pilaf, Mediterranean Couscous with Vegetables, and Seafood Risotto. It all went very well, though the vegetables for the couscous started to build up a very nice fond in the saute pan. The recipe didn't call for it, but Chef Guevara deglazed it with white wine we had pulled for the risotto. Excellent (though we had to pull more white wine).

The couscous were such a hit that Chef Guevara went the extra mile and pulled some lamb loin out of the stocks and put together a quick rub using whole grain mustard, minced parsley, cumin, coriander, red peppercorns and salt. Fantastic. The consumer students really got a treat (and Arturo and I got to take a couple of lamb loins home as well).

While cleaning up, however, Chef Guevara called all of the assistants to the front kitchen to assist with the food prep for the premiere of Curious George, which was taking place at the Arclight. The food was mostly children oriented, such as frozen bananas, mini-pizzas and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I and another classmate of mine, Sheila, were tasked with slicing the PB&Js into four triangles. After a little bit of practice, I was slicing them three at a time with a fair amount of speed. We tore threw those things quickly. Others worked on the pizzas and slicing the turkey wraps. It was an interesting introduction to movie premiere catering.

Another good learning experience.