The following article was written by former Executive Chef, Ryan’s on York, and current District 1 Alderperson, Andrew Dunbar.
As I walk through the library, I often wander toward the cookbook area. I often think about all the work that goes into writing a cookbook. There is a lot of preparation and planning before you can start. You have to think about the format of the book, the order, and even plan-out the contents.
Next, you have to come up with the product, making the items multiple, if not hundreds of times, before you are satisfied with the recipe. Then, you have to present the book to the end user or the customer. That is a great hyperbole of cooking itself. You have to plan the meal, gather the ingredients, prepare the dish, and then plate and serve the item. Many people like to cook that way and need that structure in the way they prepare the food they make.
Well, this is not that type of class.
At the Market with Andrew will be an off-the-cuff, crazy, last-second decision-making type of cooking class the likes of which the world has never seen!
Okay. Maybe not that extreme, but it will definitely be off-the-cuff. It will be full of last-second decisions, and we won’t plan anything . . . at all. We will, as I often do, wander the Manitowoc Farmers’ Market and see what it has to offer. In this class—taking place on Saturday, October 4, from 10 AM until noon—we will have a plethora of items to talk about, look at, and, if they interest us enough, add to our basket of items that we will incorporate into a dish.
This will be the fourth instalment At the Market with Andrew and I am more and more appreciative of the knowledge I learn from those taking the class. We’ll share knowledge and help guide each other in our own culinary journey. After we have finished looking at what the Market has to offer, we will head over to the library to do a cooking demonstration in the Balkansky Community Room, where we will use the items that we find to come up with something. Yes—something. I don’t really have another way to explain it, because as I said, it is going to be unplanned and will mostly be led by the ingredients that seem to stand out the most for us.
I hope you are going to join us on Saturday, October 4, from 10 AM-12 PM for our Market Adventure! And if you do, please bring family tips, tricks, and advice so that we may all grow together and become friends through food.