Now You're Cookin'
Annye's chef Nancy Wheatley wants to teach you the skills to improvise in the kitchen, and she's got the tasters to prove it
BY MARLI GUZZETTA INDEPENDENT ARTS EDITOR
The staff at Annye's Whole Foods wants you to think outside of the box - outside of your recipe box, specifically. And to this effect, they are hosting three meet-and-eat cooking classes, focusing on French, Italian and Mediterranean cuisine. After learning about useful techniques and ingredients, students will be able to enjoy the demonstrated dishes, accompanied by wine pairings selected by Gary Gahl for Boston Wine Company.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent Annye's chef Nancy Wheatley turns three of her famous roast chickens. In the first of three classes, Wheatley will shre the secrets behind the savory fowl, while also demonstrating culinary fundamentals from French, Italian and Mediterranean cooking.

"People love the food we cook here, so we thought we would share some basic knowledge," said Annye's owner Annye Camara, who hired Carolyn Walsh to plan the event alongside Annye's head chef Nancy Wheatley.

The class is intended to help you prepare an inspired dish while also having to address questions like: What's already in the 'fridge? What's freshest, most interesting on the produce shelves at the grocer? What do I need to use before it expires? What is easily at hand?

"We think people are too tied to the idea of recipes," said Walsh, who ran the Sailor's Valentine Gallery before going into private art sales, event planning and consulting. "If we need to cook something, we scratch our head, go to the recipe book, find something we have the ingredients for, and follow it to the letter. That's not a cook, it's a robot. … If they approach it a different way, they can use the skills they have and think outside the recipe box."

In other words, the classes will give home chefs the tools to improvise and adjust recipes, ingredients and techniques in order to improve the flavor of whatever they're cooking - be it an old family recipe or a recipe straight from a cookbook.

"It's all about innovative ways to use the foods you're used to using to stretch yourself," Walsh said. "We're going to show you how a common ingredient, like a tomato, can be the star of the show, or how it can be in your cast, or even in the orchestra pit. And it can be that way with anything you cook."

Wheatley described the classes as being about flavor - creating flavor and having the confidence in the kitchen to add things to recipes to make them more to your liking.

"When you want to make something for dinner, lots of people get a recipe and go and find all the ingredients. But you may not always have all the ingredients or want to go get them. ... this is about not having to rely entirely on a recipe if you have something in mind. You can take various ingredients and add flavors to them just from things you like, and you can come out with a great dinner," said Wheatley, who will travel this month to Instanbul with a group of other foodies - including Ana Sortun, owner of Oleana restaurant, Nantucket's K. Dun Gifford and several staff members from Saveur magazine - to study the area's indigenous ingredients and favorite dishes. She plans to incorporate what she's learned into her last class.

Before that, the presentation for the March 15 class will stress "clear cooking" (roasting, grilling and sautéing) and "compare the merits of these basic cooking techniques while developing the skills and judgment to take familiar ingredients to new heights." In addition to conducting a taste comparison of three different roast chickens (drycured Gianonne, d'Artagnan and agroindustrial supermarket chicken), students will also learn French and Italian sautéing basics and become familiar with ways to use grilled fruit - as garnishes, in composed salads and mixed with grains as a side dish

The accompanying menu is chock full: grilled fruits, veggies and cheeses for pick-ons during the demo, a roast chicken blind tasting, beef sautéed a la Francais or d'Italianne and composed salads, jeweled grains and pilafs, and fancy vegetable stacks on the side.

The second class (March 29) is entitled "stirring up interest" and will focus on learning how to get the most flavor from cooking liquids and also deciding when to sweat, blanch, poach, braise or "build your stock pot." The menu for that class will include eggplant served three ways and veggie and chicken tagines and tandooris, with apricots and plums.

On April 12, students of the third class will focus on "great grains and pantry basics" to learn how to develop their own personalized palette of grains, beans and corn to be used with dishes. On the menu: "nutritious grain salads, sides and main courses."

The classes will last about an hour and a half and be limited in size. Interested parties should contact Annye's Whole Foods to reserve a

place in the kitchen and at the table. I