SEASONAL CUISINE WITH MICHAEL TUOHY

Tonight I went to a cooking class at the Sacramento Natural Food coop. The guest instructor was Chef Michael Tuohy of the Grange restaurant. It was a wonderful class, Chef Tuohy was personable, informative and good at teaching a class. A lot of times Chef's can cook but can't teach a class but Chef Tuohy was great. The menu for the evening was Wild Salmon Crudo, Pan Roasted Duck Breast with Spring Vegetable Ragout and Cherry Jus, a Cheese course and Rhubarb-Strawberry Crisp.
Chef Tuohy demonstrated how to break down a whole fish, fillet and skin it. He also showed us how to scrape the meat off the fish from the scraps for the tartare.
He broke down a duck and showed us how to breast it out and score the breast and sear it. He made a vegetable ragout and a Cherry Jus to go with it.
He also made a Rhubarb-strawberry crisp which was really a good lesson because the crumble topping wasn't turning out as it was supposed to. First it was too dry then too oily so it was great that he showed that if at first it didn't come out right you either had to add more flour or more butter and that feel was your best tool.
Everything was delicious though the duck wasn't plated correctly. That was the fault of the people plating in back. Instead of draining the liquid out of the vegetable ragout they put all that juice into the plate so that it was like duck soup and the Jus was lost in all that liquid. Even with that it was delicious. Everything was so good and it was a great fun class. After all that good food we were also given a $20.00 gift card for his restaurant. I will certainly use that!
I'm really looking forward to attending one of his Farmers market tours.
Sorry there are no pictures of his wonderful food.. I forgot my camera and the camera on my phone just didn't do take very good pictures.
Wonderful class.. I hope they have more chef instructors.