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https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NFQF6GK Event Report: IWFS Napa Valley Festival May 4-9, 2025: CIA Cooking Class at Copia Upcoming Events
IWFS Napa Valley Festival May 4-9, 2025, CIA Cooking Class at Copia
Story by Tom Murnan, Photos by Tom Murnan
Perhaps to remind us how difficult three-star Michelin cooking really is, we had a CIA cooking class at Copia. If nothing else, that experience taught us humility and highlighted how little preparation of haut cuisine we actually knew. No, CIA does not stand for Central Intelligence Agency (although we certainly did gain in cooking intelligence), but Culinary Institute of America. This was in Napa city, a few blocks from our Andaz Hotel. There are different campuses here in California. We would have our Black-Tie Finale at Greystone, the CIA’s campus near St. Helena, CA. What an impressive facility the Copia campus had. We arrived at a huge room with three large kitchens, divided into two groups, and used two of the kitchens. Our mission was to use mostly the same ingredients but utilize different recipes. For example, there were two kinds of risotto: one with asparagus and morrells and one without. We had a deadline of two hours to prepare everything. Luckily, the CIA staff had done some preparation before our arrival: some cleaning, peeling, portion amounts and the like. Before starting, we were all issued an apron and a chef’s toque to wear and keep afterwards.
Each team had one chef to tutor them. Everyone had numerous questions about preparation and technique. I discovered I had been using the wrong technique to wield a chef’s knife my entire life. The correct way is to use a pinch grip where your thumb and index finger grip the blade near the bolster (heel) but before the handle, then the other fingers curl around the handle. This provides better accuracy, speed and control. It also promotes safety because your chances of slipping are decreased. We were shown how to put small slits on the skin side of salmon before cooking to keep the skin lying flat. Wife Mary and I were assigned risotto, and I learned the proper way to clean morrells. Not with running tap water but gently soaking them in water about 3 times. It was surprising how much sand fell to the bottom of the soaking pan. How to tie up two rack of lamb and cover the “Frenched” portion (bare bones where the meat had been scraped off) with tin foil to keep it white. And much more.
It took every bit of our two hours to chop, cut, blanch, bake, sauté, deep fat fry, season and garnish our creations. There were colorful edible flowers we used for our garnishments. On my asparagus risotto, we garnished the dish, green from puréed asparagus, with asparagus tips and yellow edible flowers. We ended up with about 16 different plates of everything from appetizers to dessert. It was way too much food for our group of about 40, so the staff also ate what we didn’t. It surely reminded us of what we many times take for granted: how much work food preparation really is, and how skilled a three-star Michelin restaurant must be. And we didn’t even have to bus the tables and wash the dishes!
2025 UPCOMING OMAHA METRO EVENTS
Regency Landing.
Producers: Susan Rauth, Julie Jobeun & Brent Rasmussen.
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