Cooking Class at Celilo's, Hood River, OR

Celilo's - really good food!  


What a great time was had for the 3 1/2 hour class that lasted 4 1/2 hours!  We started with a meet and greet with water, local cheese and crackers and fresh made bread.  There were 12 of us in the class.  Went over the basics and hand washing principals.  Then we got down to work in the kitchen.  


Who would ever like bitter Belgium endive salad?  Well this is what we were going to make first.  Ben Stenn is the chef and managing partner of Celilo Restaurant and Bar who was doing the cooking class.  He demonstrated how to clean and cut an endive and then handed the knife over to me and the person next to me and said now you prepare the rest of these while we go on to the next step.  Glad I had cooking classes back in Meeker since I know how to use a knife properly and we got to work.  He also had a' midevil' slicer (mandoline) that did both the horizontal and vertical cuts (Julienne cuts) for the heritage purple carrots, Taylor's Golden Pears, and Celery root.  Glad I didn't have to use that since I think it would have taken some skin off.  These all came out of the mandoline with very thin long slices.  We then toasted some local squash seeds.  Also fixed up some dressing made with honey, mustard, sherry vinegar, and olive oil.  Bringing all this together including hydrated currants that we had added some brandy. It looked like the picture to the right.  After preparing this salad we all dug in to eat it before going on to the next step.  Delicious to say the least!

Next came the Oregon Barry Farro with Winter Root Vegetables.  So what is Farro?  Click here to find out.  We looked at it and it looked like brown bb's or fat dark brown rice.  Ben put in stock as you can see in the picture to the right as well as a fresh bay leaf.  Stock consists of Onions (2 parts), carrots (1 part), and Celery (1 part).  Of course salt and pepper but that is added to almost everything for taste.  We put it on the stove to bring to a boil, then turned it down to a lower heat to let it expand and bloom!  Just like cooking with rice except it takes longer!  We prepared a bunch of vegies including Carrots, Celery root and Sunchokes.  Never ate a Celery root or a sunchokes (Jerusalem artichoke) before.  We prepared each one individually to be oven baked.  They all have different cooking times.  This will all be all be put together later but now we have to go to the main course.


Pacific King Salmon brought it today.  Ben proceeded to show us how to prepare a fillets from a whole fish.  Sure is nice to have really Sharp knives!  Showed us how he removed the fat and thinner parts of the fish so that we would have even cooking.  You can see in the second picture that he has removed these parts to the top left of the picture for use in other delicious preparations.  He is removing the bones with pliers.  To do this he gets a hold of the bone and starts pulling until it releases it hold and then it comes out nicely.

We prepared more of the Taylor's Golden Pears buy cutting them in half and spooning out the centers.  These pears are very sweet.  After we did this we cooked them to even make them sweeter and also slightly softer.  We will put them on top of our dinner plate as you will see later.

Ben prepared the first plate with all the ingredients plus others I didn't mention and topped it all off with a wonderful local blueberries (previously frozen) sauce we made up and then added extra blueberries and some brandy to the sauce.  Didn't even cook off the alcohol since he was looking for the aroma to come through.  Click on the picture for a better look.  Too bad the I-Phone doesn't take better pictures or its just me.

We then prepared the rest of the plates like Ben had done and brought them out to start eating.  Jacqueline, the house manager provided us with a wonderful glass of wine for the meal. 

Meanwhile we were enjoying our little feast he prepared the Salmon for us.  I think normally he would have severed it on this plate as well but we are in a class.   He prepared the Salmon into 6-7 ounce fillets with the skin on!  He then put them into a very hot pan, skin side down for about 3 minutes and then put them in the oven to finish them off for another 3 minutes.  He brought them out to us and servers us.  Then sat down and talked to us about the meal and answered all our questions we had.  It was a great experience and I would recommend it to anyone to take cooking classes in an upscale restaurant anytime you can find one that is offering a class.  Don't miss out on the fun and the new knowledge you will come away with. 

 Bon Appetite!