Jump to: Reviews | Celebrity Chefs Trying to Stop You From Cooking at Home
Traditional wisdom asserts that if you can't stand the heat in the kitchen, you should take off your ghillie suit. Today's Groupon brings you out of culinary camouflage with a cooking class from Basikneads Catering. For $45, you get your choice from the following a la carte cooking classes: Creole 101, Italian 101, Seafood 101, and Poultry 101 (a $90 value). Classes are offered on select Mondays and Tuesdays January through March from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. More classes will be added throughout the year, so check out the class schedule.
Surprise your sweetie with a cooking class to domesticate your whirlwind romance and move one step closer to cohabitation, resentment, and marriage. Each of Basikneads' a la carte classes will arm you with techniques and recipes to cook a mouthwatering meal at home. During your class, you'll prepare a complete dinner, including dessert, or "fool's bread," which you'll get to enjoy with complimentary wine and friends. Classes accommodate up to 12 students each, so you'll have plenty of opportunity to form alliances and challenge your new foodie friends to lighthearted fights with skewers and propane food torches. Because your batch of culinary classmates is limited, your expert chef instructor will be able to give you each individual attention, and possibly a cool kitchen nickname such as "Crockpot" or "Disney's Ratatouille."
A native New Orleanian and protégé of Emeril Lagasse himself, Chef Cornell Coulon can teach you to make traditional gumbo, red beans and rice, and bread pudding like his grandmama made in Creole 101. In Italian 101, he'll lead you through a sample of Italian wines and cheeses before teaching you to make homemade risotto with an arugula and radicchio salad. Whether you always overcook your fish or your bird always turns out dry and flavorless, Chef Coulon's seafood and poultry classes will teach you the techniques you need to prepare juicy, delicious fish and chicken. In Seafood 101, you'll make a brilliant bouillabaisse to go with your fish and a pear and rosemary tarte tartin. In Poultry 101, you won't just learn to cook a bird one way—you'll sear and confit a chicken with seasonal veggies and a decadent crème brûlée.
Subtly suggest your roommate improve her cooking skills or liberate yourself from the cycle of Lean Cuisines, Easy Mac, and your standby stroganoff with today's gastronomic Groupon.
Reviews
Though there are few reviews of Chef Coulon's classes, Northern Virginia Magazine calls Basikneads Best Caterer in NoVa. Insider Pagers give the company three stars, while WeddingWire reviewers rate it 4.5. Here's what they say about their Basikneads experience:
- …the staff really works with you to meet your needs and give you what you want. The food is fantastic and everything was well organized. – keira g., Insider Pages
- The salad was amazing, pears, cheese and really quality lettuce. The cheese platter was out of this world. The beef tenderloin melted in my mouth. – Andrea V., Insider Pages
- Cornell [Coulon] is a great chef! – Jennifer, WeddingWire
Groupon Says
Celebrity Chefs Trying to Stop You From Cooking at Home
Learning to cook is not only fun, it also teaches you a skill you can use throughout your life. Who could be against learning to cook, you ask? Celebrity chefs. Here are what some celebrity chefs are doing to prevent you from learning to cook:
Emeril Lagasse: This spice-loving Louisiana native and one-time sitcom star is known for his high-octane cooking shows and his line of Essence spice blends. Lesser known is the tracking beacon inside each spice bottle that wirelessly transmits updates on your cooking to Emeril’s arctic lair inside Sweden’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Even lesser known is the hidden beacon’s ability to explode in a rain of fire while playing Emeril’s diabolical laugh in a loop so home chefs know who’s wrath they’ve incurred.
Mario Batali: This larger-than-life Italian-style chef frequently discourages cooking at home by using tools and ingredients out of reach for most cooks, including expensive truffles, the bones of still-living celebrities, and the text of The Old Man and the Sea spoken into sauces by acclaimed actor Michael Douglas. To prevent Michael Douglas from cooking at home, Batali has used his trained army of woodland mammals to infest Douglas’s homes with raccoons.
Rachel Ray: Have you ever actually made a Rachel Ray recipe? No. Because if you had, you would know that all of her recipes, no matter what they are called, do not produce delicious meals, but an interdimensional super-being called Klög, able to enslave humanity with his thought rays. Hence, many of her recipes call for ingredients such as "pages from the book of Shagammoor" and "elf lymph."
Comment on our feelings board
