Cooking « NomadicChique

Much has been written about the gender wars when it come to cooking. Who makes a better chef, a man or a woman? Who pays more attention to detail? Does one gender have a natural penchant for cooking? (A-Hem) and so on…

But the real question is…why isn’t my husband making dinner more often? (No, actually, truth be told, I can’t say that…at all! Steven is an excellent cook and I probably just got myself into a lot of trouble)

But what I mean to say is

Barcelona is a center of culinary delight. The freshness that spills out of markets like La Boqueria and Santa Cristina is testament to that. So what better place to learn some of the secrets of their ‘cuina’ (yeah! I know a word in Catalan!) than cooking school?

Steven and I went to the ‘Cook & Taste’ cooking school in Barcelona and learned some Catalan specialties…divine! We also learned the answer to that long-debated question, who makes a better chef, a man or a woman? The simple answer is…

Whoever puts down their wine glass long enough to get the work done. In the case of our Catalan cooking class, it was definitely the men!

10 of us, eager students and food lovers, arrived at 11 a.m. where Maria, our instructor, had laid out all the items we were going to need to cook each dish. She went through them one by one, starting with the Romesco sauce for roasted courgettes (zucchini). Once she had demonstrated how each dish would be cooked, she invited us to start pouring our wine (Spanish, of course); after all, what self-respecting chef cooks without wine?

We laughed and savored our way into Catalan cooking and eating until well after 4 p.m. We were stuffed and swore off eating…until about 9:30 that night (it is Barcelona, after all).

Maria, I need you for a dinner idea tonight!

(Click on image below for slideshow)