The Instructor (Chef) was?: As always Chef Jean Pierre combines his cooking lesson with a wonderfully friendly and humorous attitude. The confidence and experience as a professional chef equips him with a variety of teaching tools that simplify an otherwise difficult process, the making of Bouillabaisse, into one a home chef can understand and easily apply in their own kitchen.
The atmosphere was: The crowd was engaged, relaxed and at times "in stitches" ,for example when the Chef explained and demonstrated the process of creating the proper trajectory of a “tip” when beating egg whites we were all laughing. Call it; “Commedia dell’ cuisine”. As well, I am always impressed with his Love of America and slight disdain for the French. For me there was an added lesson of national pride for those who were born here to take home with them along with the recipe du noir.
Complexity of the information provided: I signed up for the Bouillabaisse class months ago in anticipation of learning how to create this wonderful and seemingly difficult seafood mélange. If one takes a look at a Bouillabaisse recipe in a cook book or off of the internet they will find it easier to build an airplane than to prepare this succulent seafood soup as it is described , and you would need that airplane to travel around gathering the ingredients that most recipes call for. Chef Jean Pierre uses local fish and and shellfish along with common ingredients that clears the runway for the home chef to make a Bouillabaisse with relative ease. I made it the following day and was amazed at the flavor of my creation! It was almost as good as the last Bouillabaisse I had…..in Monaco.
The Food (or Wine for a Wine) Class: Chef Jean Pierre’s Bouillabaisse was better than the last Bouillabaisse I had…..in Monaco.
The Skills that you learn were: The making of bouillabaisse requires a lot of time in the preparation of the stock and soup but things happen very fast when the fish and shellfish are added at the end. The most important step for me was in the cooking of the fish in the “soup“. As the chef explains one must enter the fish and shellfish into the hot liquid at different times and according to how fast the fish and shellfish would cook in a different medium. It is important to cook the fish in the base allowing a gentle simmer to slowly coax the fish to a point where it is done but not well done.
Would you come back: Yes. Cooking is adventure, Jean Pierre is your tour guide.