The foundation of many Indian recipes begins with lentils (dal). This grain is an essential source of inexpensive protein throughout the country for people on a vegetarian diet. They are relatively easy to prepare and they absorb many other flavors which makes them incredibly versatile and useful even in non-vegetarian dishes. Indian food served in restaurants can sometimes be thick and heavy, but in this class, Palak's Indian Kitchen: The Indian Lentil, chef Palak Patel will introduce you to light and fresh tasting recipes with lots of spices and aromatics. Using organic and sustainably produced ingredients, you'll see a number of uses for this amazing grain in dishes can be used as a sides or main courses. The beauty of these dishes lies in the simplicity of creating them, contrasted by the complexity of the flavor. Vegetarians and meat eaters alike will walk away from this class with the benefits of knowing how to make hearty nutritious dishes using this amazing ingredient.

Recipes: Curried Yellow Lentils and Sweet Potato Soup; Warm Lentil Salad with Coconut and Tomato; Spiced Lentils with Chicken

Class Type: Series: Palak's Indian Kitchen

Class Notes: Learn to prepare lentils with all the complex flavors and tastes of great Indian cuisine.

Palak Patel

Chef Palak Patel moved to NY from San Francisco where she served as personal chef to the well to do crowd of the Silicon Valley. She competed on the Sears Chef Challenge, one of only 12 chefs selected to compete in a national cooking competition for charity and featured on CBS series about outsourcing your life. As a teenager, she learned everything she could from her mother about traditional Indian cuisine. Palak's main goal is to integrate fresh produce and flavors of Indian cooking with French techniques. Palak is currently enrolled in the French Culinary Institute, a premier member of United States Personal Chef Association (USPCA), Women Chef Restaurateurs and Slow Food USA

The foundation of many Indian recipes begins with lentils (dal). This grain is an essential source of inexpensive protein throughout the country for people on a vegetarian diet. They are relatively easy to prepare and they absorb many other flavors which makes them incredibly versatile and useful even in non-vegetarian dishes. Indian food served in restaurants can sometimes be thick and heavy, but in this class, Palak's Indian Kitchen: The Indian Lentil, chef Palak Patel will introduce you to light and fresh tasting recipes with lots of spices and aromatics. Using organic and sustainably produced ingredients, you'll see a number of uses for this amazing grain in dishes can be used as a sides or main courses. The beauty of these dishes lies in the simplicity of creating them, contrasted by the complexity of the flavor. Vegetarians and meat eaters alike will walk away from this class with the benefits of knowing how to make hearty nutritious dishes using this amazing ingredient.

Recipes: Curried Yellow Lentils and Sweet Potato Soup; Warm Lentil Salad with Coconut and Tomato; Spiced Lentils with Chicken

Class Type: Series: Palak's Indian Kitchen

Class Notes: Learn to prepare lentils with all the complex flavors and tastes of great Indian cuisine.

Palak Patel

Chef Palak Patel moved to NY from San Francisco where she served as personal chef to the well to do crowd of the Silicon Valley. She competed on the Sears Chef Challenge, one of only 12 chefs selected to compete in a national cooking competition for charity and featured on CBS series about outsourcing your life. As a teenager, she learned everything she could from her mother about traditional Indian cuisine. Palak's main goal is to integrate fresh produce and flavors of Indian cooking with French techniques. Palak is currently enrolled in the French Culinary Institute, a premier member of United States Personal Chef Association (USPCA), Women Chef Restaurateurs and Slow Food USA

Are you nervous about cooking for your Valentine? In this class is designed for novice cooks, our chef will walk students through a delicious menu that’s surprisingly easy to put together. We’ll also share do-ahead tips so you’re not stuck in the kitchen the whole night!

The Everlasting Meal Cooking Series is a series of classes based on Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal, a practical, poetic guide for home cooks. In the book's foreword, Tamar's mentor, Alice Waters writes of the cook:

She has an instinctive gift for cooking, an almost effortless way of creating meals-and as I quickly learned, she is an extraordinary writer: tremendously talented, with an unswerving commitment to the philosophy of honest food. How rare and wonderful it is to have a book grounded in instinct, prompting the reader to examine the world around him or herself differently, allowing cooking to become a continuous, integrative process that flows from meal to meal.

In this four class series, Tamar will teach the fundamental skills and outlooks that allow cooking to become instinctual. Each class is grounded in one technique, but with a pronounced emphasis on understanding different applications, substitutions, and the reasons for everything.

A signed book is included in the price of the series, as are guest appearances from local chefs!

Class One: Soup Making Principles and Variations In An Everlasting Meal, Tamar says that soup is "the perfect place for things to get picked up and left off." She insists that you can always make a delicious soup from whatever you have in your kitchen. In this class you learn how. Tamar will teach the principles behind making pureed vegetables soups (potages), brothy soups, and bread soups, along with ideas for turning each into a heartier meal. You will leave with a new sense of soup intuition!

Class Two: Vegetable Roasting and Small Transformation One of our favorite chapters in An Everlasting Meal, "How to Stride Ahead," recommends shopping at the farmers' market-or wherever you can get the leafiest, stemmiest vegetables-and then taking a little time to r