Learning to Cook: My Winter Break Experiences with Walter Staib

  • Thread starter Cyrus
  • Start date
In summary: Someone who makes bread? I swear someone on PF does.Heh, ZapperZee does.The only cooking necessary to survive is boiling noodles and using a grill. If you can grill a steak your job in learning how to cook is...well, pretty much done.
  • #1
Cyrus
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Since I have some free time during winter break, I tried to take a crack at cooking. Well, I should not quit my day job...yet. I bought a nice European Cookbook by Walter Staib which has stuff from the Austrian/German region.

http://www.pct.edu/pctoday/uploads/staib_walter.jpg [Broken]

I tried to make some Poached Salmon with Tomatoes & Dill cream Sauce (Pochierter lacs mit tomaten & dill soße), Brussel Sprouts Braised with Bacon & Fennel (Rosenkohl mit speck & Fenchel), Macaire Potatoes (Macaire kartoffel) and to drink a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/8246/pict0017jo8.jpg [Broken]

It wasnt THAT bad- but it certainly wasnt the same as the pictures in the book.

Next, I am going to try to make some Russian Eggs, and maybe a Creme Brulee or a Chocolate Souffle.


Cooking is hard. :mad:
 
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  • #2
My culinary skills are limited to pouring boiling water into a pot noodle. I admire anyone who gives it a go and I have to say that poached salmon looks quite tasty. I wouldn't be too bothered about the presentation, a lot of that comes with practice so I hear.

I really might have a go at some cooking myself :smile:
 
  • #3
Way to go Cyrus!
 
  • #4
Hey!, at least you started properly, and picked great dishes :smile:
 
  • #5
cooking=art
baking=science


try your hand in some baking instead.
 
  • #6
Oh, and I got a nice german 9" wusthof chefs knife.

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/9321/pict00185vf.jpg [Broken]

It slices through things like butter. It has a nice grip and a heavy weight to it.
 
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  • #7
cyrusabdollahi said:
Since I have some free time during winter break, I tried to take a crack at cooking. Well, I should not quit my day job...yet. I bought a nice European Cookbook by Walter Staib which has stuff from the Austrian/German region.

http://www.pct.edu/pctoday/uploads/staib_walter.jpg [Broken]

I tried to make some Poached Salmon with Tomatoes & Dill cream Sauce (Pochierter lacs mit tomaten & dill soße), Brussel Sprouts Braised with Bacon & Fennel (Rosenkohl mit speck & Fenchel), Macaire Potatoes (Macaire kartoffel) and to drink a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/8246/pict0017jo8.jpg [Broken]

It wasnt THAT bad- but it certainly wasnt the same as the pictures in the book.

Next, I am going to try to make some Russian Eggs, and maybe a Creme Brulee or a Chocolate Souffle.


Cooking is hard. :mad:
That looks so awesome and TASTY! :!) :!) :!)

cyrusabdollahi said:
Oh, and I got a nice german 9" wusthof chefs knife.

http://www.kitchenniche.ca/images/wusthofclassicchefknife9.jpg [Broken]

It slices through things like butter. It has a nice grip and a heavy weight to it.
There is no better investment you can make than in a good knife.
 
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  • #8
cyrusabdollahi said:
Oh, and I got a nice german 9" wusthof chefs knife.

Ha! Mine's bigger.
 
  • #9
They should not sell knives that big to you Rach. You would burn it and slice your fingers off.
 
  • #10
cyrusabdollahi said:
They should not sell knives that big to you Rach. You would burn it and slice your fingers off.

Geez, you'd have to be a really bad cook to burn your knife! :rofl:

On the other hand, food looks tasty Cyrus, well done.
 
  • #11
really, only 9"?
 
  • #12
cyrusabdollahi said:
It slices through things like butter.
Okay, but does it also slice through things like meat, vegetables and fruit?
 
  • #13
BUTTER ONLY! :mad: :mad:

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/9/9e/250px-Sein_soup_nazi.jpg [Broken]
 
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  • #14
You seem to be learning the right way, by just doing it. Salmon is really easy to overcook. So if you were able to keep it moist, your way ahead of the game. You have a great start, the plateing looks wonderful.

You should try the Creme Brulee, cooking with a torch just rules!
 
  • #15
cyrusabdollahi said:
BUTTER ONLY! :mad: :mad:

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/9/9e/250px-Sein_soup_nazi.jpg [Broken]
[/URL]

Godwin's Law - I win!

Of course, it's irrelevant that I can't cook to save my hide...except for omelette, real omelette! I can do that if I've got about an hour or so to spare. My omelette will bring tears to the eyes of Tyler Florence (ingredients: 1 egg, 7 large onions, 6 habanero pepppers).
 
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  • #16
Isn't there a bread guy here?

Someone who makes bread? I swear someone on PF does.
 
  • #17
JasonRox said:
Isn't there a bread guy here?

Someone who makes bread? I swear someone on PF does.
I make bread.
 
  • #18
I do too. I actually bake a hell of a lot more than I cook.
 
  • #19
JasonRox said:
Isn't there a bread guy here?

Someone who makes bread? I swear someone on PF does.

Heh, ZapperZee does.
 
  • #20
The only cooking necessary to survive is boiling noodles and using a grill. If you can grill a steak your job in learning how to cook is done.
 
  • #21
I make bread too, but not much recently (takes too much time, but now that I've located rye flour, I'll be giving rye bread a stab...I was shocked how difficult it was to find rye flour in this town; no wonder I can't find decent rye bread either).

That meal looks tasty, Cyrus! Don't knock it that the presentation doesn't look the same as in the cookbook. They spend a lot of time wiping extra slop off plates and choosing just the perfect piece of fish and only the perfect potatoes, etc., so they can stage a pretty picture under just the right lighting. Yours still looks scrumptious, and a much nicer presentation than I'd have bothered with.

You sure don't start out learning on the easy stuff, do you?! Poached salmon and souffles...wow! So, who's the lady you're trying to impress? :biggrin:
 
  • #22
cyrusabdollahi said:
Oh, and I got a nice german 9" wusthof chefs knife.

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/9321/pict00185vf.jpg [Broken]

It slices through things like butter. It has a nice grip and a heavy weight to it.

I have that set of knives ( think 12 total including). They cost an arm and a leg, but worth every penny.

Zz.
 
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  • #23
Cyrus, cookbooks are OK as far as they go, but the real fun in cooking is creating your own meals. Think of things that might go well together and give them a whirl. My wife and I are always tossing things together and many of our favorite dishes were born that way. Recently we sauteed peppers, onions and mushrooms until they were browned, stirred in a can of black beans and some of our jalapeno salsa and served that over a bed of Basmati rice. It was delicious. We made a similar dish recently by mixing all those ingredients (including the steamed rice) putting them in a casserole dish topped with shredded cheeses, and baked it until the cheese melted in and browned on top.

I applaud your efforts and wish you well as you learn, but don't be too constrained by recipes. The best meal you've never had (yet) is probably riding around in your imagination right now. My wife took a course in gourmet French provincial cooking, yet she never makes a single dish that she made in that course. The practical things that she learned, like how to make a good soup stock, how to debone chickens, how to handle chef's knives, etc, were worth the tuition, but our best dishes still come from imagination and a creative treatment of whatever is available in our freezers or was on sale at the market. This morning we had a great breakfast of pan-fried potatoes and sea scallops sauteed in butter. Fresh scallops were on sale yesterday.
 
  • #24
I have the feeling that you and your wife make good food.
 
  • #25
ZapperZ said:
I have that set of knives ( think 12 total including). They cost an arm and a leg, but worth every penny.

Zz.
My favorite was a 6" chef's knife of forged steel by Sabatier. Somehow, in one of our many moves it was lost. :cry:
 
  • #26
turbo-1 said:
Cyrus, cookbooks are OK as far as they go, but the real fun in cooking is creating your own meals.
...
I applaud your efforts and wish you well as you learn, but don't be too constrained by recipes.

If someone has no cooking experience, cookbooks are a good place to start. As you start to learn what ingredients go together and how various flavors mingle, and what you like and don't like, and what parts of recipes can be substituted for others without disastrous consequences, then you can start experimenting with your own variations. It's just like learning chemistry...you have to start out learning about reactions others have already worked out and following the instructions in the lab manual to the letter, but as someone learns more, they know where they can change things to achieve different goals without blowing up the building. :biggrin:

As you gain confidence in your cooking skills, I think you make a natural progression to looking at a recipe and saying, "Hmm...this sounds really good, except for that one spice I know I really don't like...but I wonder how it would taste if I put in this other one I do like instead?"
 
  • #27
cyrusabdollahi said:
I have the feeling that you and your wife make good food.
Well, when we show up at family get-togethers and bring food, we get swarmed at the door, so I think we're doing OK. For a lot of years, while my cousin's girls were growing up, my Christmas present to them was to cook their favorite foods for Christmas day. Except for the shrimp egg-rolls, which my wife made, all the rest of it was stuff that I had made up and you couldn't get anywhere else. For instance, I used to marinade strips of tender steak in a very spicy (hot) sauce made with peanut oil, orange juice, soy sauce, and lots of spices, then suspend them by toothpicks from the top grill of my Brinkman charcoal smoker over hickory chips until they were heavily smoked, but still rare in the middle. One of the girls asked for this every year and nagged her folks to come over early so she could help me make them. We did a lot of taste-testing... :tongue2:
 
  • #28
JasonRox said:
Isn't there a bread guy here?

Someone who makes bread? I swear someone on PF does.
I used to make whole-wheat bread from scratch every week until my wife got a bread machine and worked up a recipe for onion-rye bread that is to kill for. I learned to cook by watching and helping my mother. She was French-Canadian and many, many creations started off with a cast-iron frying pan for sauteeing, some butter and some fresh vegetables (onions, peppers, and garlic were indispensable!). When we couldn't afford fresh vegetables (kinda pricey in the winters in the 50's) she made do with canned stuff, potatoes, carrots, turnips, and other root vegetables that we could store in our cold cellar, and things we had harvested and frozen in our big Norge freezer the previous spring and summer.
 
  • #29
Moonbear said:
II'll be giving rye bread a stab

As well you should; it must be stabbed, shot, hung, or whatever it takes to kill it once and for all.

I made bread when I was 7 or 8. Wouldn't mind taking another go at it, but it's so cheap to buy that I don't have an incentive.

And I repeat here my recipe for the perfect meal: chainsaw-cow--fire is optional.
 
  • #30
did someone say bread??

http://www.wowway.com/~deerhake.11/roll.jpg [Broken]
i love a good roll. just made them today.. may not look pretty, but i don't cook for display purposes :biggrin:
 
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  • #31
Danger said:
As well you should; it must be stabbed, shot, hung, or whatever it takes to kill it once and for all.

I made bread when I was 7 or 8. Wouldn't mind taking another go at it, but it's so cheap to buy that I don't have an incentive.

And I repeat here my recipe for the perfect meal: chainsaw-cow--fire is optional.

:rofl:

My incentive for baking is not being able to find decent bread around here. I never needed to bake when I lived in NJ...that's what bakeries were for!

I located several recipes for rye bread. This is going to have to wait until I order more flour. It seems all the recipes concur that I need to get something called first clear flour, and if I had a hard enough time finding rye flour at the stores, I know I'm not finding that here...so I just ordered some online and will have to put my bread baking on hold until it arrives. I guess I can begin work on the starter. This is going to take some committment if I want to make rye bread right. It's about a 3 day process to make the whole thing, so I need to plan ahead on this.
 
  • #32
Moonbear said:
Now that I've located rye flour, I'll be giving rye bread a stab.

Swedish limpa bread is wonderful. I more-or-less follow James Beard's recipe in "Beard on Bread". It takes a long time to make. The results are worth it.
 
  • #33
D H said:
Swedish limpa bread is wonderful. I more-or-less follow James Beard's recipe in "Beard on Bread". It takes a long time to make. The results are worth it.

I might try that at some point (I have a recipe for that in one of my cookbooks), but that's not what I'm craving. I'm craving New York Jewish rye bread. It's the stuff where you actually have to make a bad batch first, just so you have day-old bread to make a good batch.
 
  • #34
I always used to do the next best thing...buy homemade bread for dirt cheap. Just go over to the hutterite colony and buy whole wheat, white, rye bread for hardly anything.
 
  • #35
what's a hutterite colony?
 
<h2>1. What inspired you to learn to cook over winter break?</h2><p>I have always been fascinated by the art of cooking and wanted to expand my skills during my break from school. I also had the opportunity to work with renowned chef Walter Staib, which was a major motivation for me.</p><h2>2. What was the most valuable lesson you learned from Walter Staib?</h2><p>The most valuable lesson I learned from Walter was the importance of attention to detail in cooking. He taught me the significance of using fresh, high-quality ingredients and the proper techniques to bring out the best flavors in a dish.</p><h2>3. What was your favorite dish that you learned to cook during your winter break experience?</h2><p>It's hard to choose just one, but I would say my favorite dish was the classic French onion soup that Walter taught me how to make. The rich, savory flavors and the satisfaction of mastering a traditional French dish made it a standout for me.</p><h2>4. How did your experience with Walter Staib impact your overall cooking skills?</h2><p>I would say that my experience with Walter greatly improved my cooking skills. Not only did I learn new recipes and techniques, but I also gained a better understanding of the science behind cooking and how to experiment with flavors to create unique dishes.</p><h2>5. Would you recommend others to take a cooking class with Walter Staib?</h2><p>Absolutely! Walter is an incredibly knowledgeable and patient instructor who is passionate about sharing his love for cooking with others. Taking a class with him is not only educational, but also a fun and enjoyable experience.</p>

1. What inspired you to learn to cook over winter break?

I have always been fascinated by the art of cooking and wanted to expand my skills during my break from school. I also had the opportunity to work with renowned chef Walter Staib, which was a major motivation for me.

2. What was the most valuable lesson you learned from Walter Staib?

The most valuable lesson I learned from Walter was the importance of attention to detail in cooking. He taught me the significance of using fresh, high-quality ingredients and the proper techniques to bring out the best flavors in a dish.

3. What was your favorite dish that you learned to cook during your winter break experience?

It's hard to choose just one, but I would say my favorite dish was the classic French onion soup that Walter taught me how to make. The rich, savory flavors and the satisfaction of mastering a traditional French dish made it a standout for me.

4. How did your experience with Walter Staib impact your overall cooking skills?

I would say that my experience with Walter greatly improved my cooking skills. Not only did I learn new recipes and techniques, but I also gained a better understanding of the science behind cooking and how to experiment with flavors to create unique dishes.

5. Would you recommend others to take a cooking class with Walter Staib?

Absolutely! Walter is an incredibly knowledgeable and patient instructor who is passionate about sharing his love for cooking with others. Taking a class with him is not only educational, but also a fun and enjoyable experience.

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