The Fuzzy Chef & Friends

Returning the space to its original purpose before a failed flirtation with Spanish food, the corner of Laguna & Hayes is once again a bakery and cafe.  While Terra is a bit more upscale than Pendragon was, it's still good bread and pastry, and very affordable for the neighborhood.  Haven't tried the cafe food there yet; will write a full review when I do. 

For my second trick, I taught how to make a more complicated, "company" risotto for entertaining or special evenings. This one involves a lot more work, primarily because of the requirement to separately prepare a lot of the ingredients and the "stir continuously" rice cooking method.   In the picture above, it's the yellow one.  Click through for recipe.

This is the first of the two risottos we made for the class, to demonstrate the easy, low-attention way of making risotto, for weeknights when both you and your sweetie are tired and you can't deal with a high-attention dish.  It's the dark-colored of the two risottos above.  Pictures of the cooking steps supplied by Matt Sonic!  Click through for recipe.

The subject of this first class was risotto, the traditional northern Italian rice dish.  I wanted to both demystify risotto, which I think many Californians regard as very gourmet rather than the simple country dish it is, and show the basic techniques.  Once you have the techniques, you can make any kind of risotto you want, based on what you find in the market or what you happen to have in the fridge.  I'll follow up this post with recipes.