Cooking With Fall Produce

In honor of Thanksgiving (and home-cooked meals), I wanted to write about a very special cooking lesson that I recently had the honor of experiencing. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am a diner and not much of a cooker (my specialty is knowing how to heat things up!), but a dear friend had received a home cooking lesson from Home Cooking New York (homecookingny.com) as a gift, and she generously invited me to be a part of it. How could I not accept such a generous and amazing offer?

My friend selected Cooking with Fall Produce as her cooking lesson. The menu was:

Roasted pork tenderloin with apple cranberry compote

Butternut squash and sage risotto

Beets with warm prosciutto dressing

Apple hand pies

We were very lucky to have as our instructor, Jennifer Clair, the founder of Home Cooking New York. She arrived at 1 p.m. and for the next 2.5 hours we were cooking up a storm!!

What I learned:

Red beets: You can eat the greens! Use them to make a great Asian-styled salad.

Pie crust: The secret is making it with 3 sticks of butter. Forget about the fruit filling, the crust is everything! Though to be honest, we sort of made 2-hand pies, as opposed to hand pies . . .

Rice counts when making risotto: Arborio rice was requested.

Chicken broth: Again, no regular old chicken broth would do. Pacific Organic or Imagine was suggested. We went for Pacific Organic.

READ YOUR LABELS when shopping: We didn’t actually make pork tenderloin as my friend mistakenly purchased the center cut (it was placed right next to the tenderloin and the identifying wording was in fine print). So, watch out for grocery store trickery!

And as the sous chef, I was too busy chopping and prepping to take as many pictures as I had actually wanted to. However, below is the finished product—and trust me when I say that the food was delicious!

My only substitution might be the apple cranberry compote. It just seemed a bit boring in comparison to everything else on the menu.

MUST KNOW: For anyone considering the home cooking lesson, you are responsible for purchasing all the groceries for the menu. Home Cooking New York will provide you with a shopping list.