HipCooks...

Since I've recently (over the past couple of years now) gotten more into baking and even a bit of cooking, T bought me a cooking class for my Xmas presie last year.  Between trying to find a class we both wanted to take and our wacky 2016 schedules we finally got to do it last Sunday!

There's apparently a whole bunch of these sorts of things around but the one we did was HipCooks in downtown Santa Ana.  We met up at C4 Deli for a quick glass of wine then headed over.

It was a little awkward at 1st.  I wasn't sure who was the teacher and people seemed to be milling around a bit confused.  Someone told us to sign in, wash our hands and put on an apron.  Um. Ok.  Both T and I were a little concerned this was going to turn out to be a dud.  But luckily no!

The instructor was very chill, more of a "we're hanging out in her kitchen while she teaches us" sort of thing.  The class we picked out was J'aime Paris.

She called us around the counter and we began!

Ready to cook!

A lot of the stuff had already been cooked or prepared which was kind of a bummer, but I understand due to time constraints.  I was also a little bummed that we all didn't get to cook our own version.  It was more of a "Hey you do this".  Then someone else would do something else and so on and so forth.  It was also a bit scattered and I wasn't sure what we were making when.

The other slightly annoying thing was every time I took a picture I had to wash my hands.  Touch your phone wash your hands.  Ugh.  I felt like I washed the 1st layer of skin off, but again - I get it.



She pulled out some chickens that she had already cooked and they smelled divine.  There was water and tea if we wanted as well, so that was cool.  As we began, she sort of just told random people to do random things.  There were only 2 places to cook things.  They were these portable little stove top thingies.  So cool!

We made our desserts 1st, which I thought was odd, but then realized they had to cook during the class.  They were these little ramekins of chocolate mousse.  OMG.  So friggin good.  This was also when I learned there is a vanilla paste that is SO F-ING TASTY AND SMELLS DIVINE!  I'm using that instead of extract from now on!  I bought a bottle - check it

We could not stop smelling the vanilla.  So good!

 She then had us all chop chop chopping away.  Baby Bok Choys, Parsley, Grapes, Baby Tomatoes.  The really cool thing was she gave us some great cutting tips.  Simple adjustments on how you hold the knife is going to make chopping so much easier!!

I'm cutting grapes!

Wine time!  She broke out a white for all of us as we got ready to steam the clams.

Hello little clams.  We gonna eat ya!

My kind of class!

We then sat down and got to eat the yummy clam dish appetizer!!

So good!  Light and crisp sauce!  Yuuuummmmm!!!

After we ate and chopped we then got to taste the sauce we were making for the chicken.  She had us taste it about three different times, each time adding more stuff to it so we noticed the difference in taste.  This was one of my favorite parts because you really got to see what adding more of one thing mattered.  I so love food!!

Our yummy chicken in our yummier sauce!

After we finished, she opened a bottle of burgundy and we all sat around the table and got to eat our yummies.  It was so good!!!  The chicken fell right off the bone!  We also made a green bean/white bean/basil salad that was so simple and so yummy!

DELICIOUS!

There was a hint of orange in here, but she was saying you could add nutmeg or cinnamon!  Yum!

Terri's haul

All in all - super fun!  It was something different to do.  I learned some great tips and we got to eat great food that we helped make!  I had so much fun with T and all the other people seemed very cool.  There was this young couple that sat next to us at the table and the little gal was super sweet!  She plans to check out our little Orange Farmers Market after I told her about the shell fish dudes!

Thank you to Terri for a really great Xmas present!  I hope to take more of these types of classes in the future!  So much fun!