On Saturday afternoon I was the guest teacher at the Cavallo Point Cooking School. What a hoot! I've never taught before and I was a little nervous but my overwhelming desire to impose my tastes on others overcame any nerves I might have felt. Resident chef Kelsie Kerr and her excellent crew made me feel right at home in the beautiful facility overlooking the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.
The class was very hands-on and we made beans, tortillas (from nixtamal, not masa harina), nopales, requeson and more. When we finally sat down to eat, it was pretty great, I must say.
The hard part is watching students make mistakes. I'm not a natural teacher and would rather just do it myself than watch them burn the tortillas, but it was so busy I couldn't micro-manage and of course after a dozen mishaps, the tortillas were great. So we all learned something!
I grew up in Sausalito and this part of the bay was off limits unless you knew families stationed at Fort Baker. It's still surreal seeing all this fine dining and recreation in what was such a restricted area. But the setting is only secondary to the great classes. I met a lot of interesting people and ate really well. I don't think it gets much better than that.
My friend from high school Julie wrote me after reading this post:
“The other day I was remembering that vegetarian cooking class we took in high school. The “teacher” kept enticing use with some freaky casserole dish that he could ONLY give us the recipe to if we took the advanced class…remember? Can’t remember the guy’s name but I do remember it was something he made up himself. (like “Rainstorm” but his
real name was Ralph)”
I also remember there was kind of a hip, pretty woman who was older than us and I think he put his arm around her in a creepy way and we both gagged and she went on to take the “advanced” class.