Jeni Mendez watched closely as chef Eric Dantis stirred a pot of rice. Dantis was making mujadara, an Arabic lentil and rice dish, as part of a cooking class called Rice, Rice Baby at Heirloom Kitchen in Old Bridge. He began by caramelizing aromatics, then added rice to toast it, and then some water. “Don’t stir too often,” Dantis advised, “because you’re putting something cool onto something hot and bringing the temperature down.” Mendez and the 13 other students in the class looked eager to stir. They learned to resist.
“What kind of rice are you using?” Mendez asked.
“Jasmine,” Dantis said. “We’re using jasmine for everything tonight. It’s my favorite.”
“My kids eat rice, like, four times a week,” said Mendez, a mom of two who lives in Marlboro. “They were getting tired of what I make.”
About two hours later, Mendez had several new dishes to add to her repertoire. “I like to make things for dinner that I can pack in a thermos for the next day’s lunch,” she says, adding that the class inspired her.
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“Rice making speaks to the soul of the chef,” says Heirloom Kitchen’s executive chef, David Viana, noting that it requires minimal ingredients (“rice, butter, salt, water”) but careful technique. “The diameter of the pot has a say; how much water goes above the rice has a say.”
Heirloom Kitchen opened as a cooking school in 2014 and became a restaurant as well in 2017, when founder Neilly Robinson brought Viana on board as partner and chef. “What’s given the school its success is that, initially, everyone was freelance, but now, it’s a team that teaches and works in the restaurant,” Robinson says. “Everyone on the team contributes to the curriculum, whether they’re nerding out on fermentation or making pasta dough or teaching Filipino or Ukrainian or Azerbaijani cuisine.”
Cooking schools throughout the state channel New Jerseyans’ love of food and restaurants into skills they can apply when feeding their families or hosting parties. For some patrons, a few hours of chopping and stirring are their own reward, an unusual date night or a girls’ night out. Others, such as Mendez, whose kids are adventurous young eaters, are there strictly to learn.
Children’s classes are offered at some schools. Linda Cashan, owner of Kitchen 19 in Hammonton, enjoys the enthusiasm of the kids who attend her kitchen camps. “They’ll cook at home what they’ve made in class and then send me pictures of it,” she says.
For adults, hands-on pasta-making classes are especially popular at Kitchen 19, but Cashan also finds students interested in classic French cooking; hence, a demonstration class that featured souffles this spring. “Not a lot of people can do that, because the techniques are more sophisticated,” she says, “and the best way to learn is to pay attention, pull stools up to the table, and talk in detail about it.”
“Food allows you to connect with people on a primal level,” says chef Karan Fischer of Montclair Culinary Academy. “I educate them on knife skills, how to use which salt or which oil, how to use parchment rather than aluminum foil, when to add liquid in a risotto. It’s always hands-on. Muscle has memory, and I want them to keep these skills.”
Although primarily designed as a degree-granting program for the lucrative restaurant and hospitality markets of the Atlantic City and Cape May regions, Atlantic Cape Community College’s campus in Mays Landing also offers hands-on and demonstration workshops known as enthusiast classes, according to Joe Sheridan, culinary arts director. “We’ve done themes like an evening in Provence, or a class on the Feast of the Seven Fishes,” Sheridan says. “Other times, it’s about one-pan meals or cast-iron cooking. It’s all for people who are re-discovering cooking or want to be better at it.”
Most cooking schools for the general public offer single classes on a theme rather than a course with multiple sessions. Costs vary, ranging from about $65 to $175 per person for a two- or three-hour class, and they often sell out well in advance. “With so many people still working from home after Covid, people want experiences,” Cashan says.
The Cooking School at Natirar, located on a 90-acre estate in Somerset County, offers classes in several settings, including outdoors. Natirar has classes such as Amazing Appetizers, with Asian dumplings, wild-mushroom tartlets and other tidbits for fancy parties, and Bakeshop, in which the secrets of black-and-white cookies and New York-style crumb cake are revealed.
“We do a lot of steak and Stanley Tucci-style Italian,” says Randi Jeddis, manager of the cooking school. “We are all about entertainment. We have a full bar, and you can order a drink in class. You learn a lot, but it’s entertaining.” That’s not to say the classes are not skill oriented. This spring, Natirar offered Open Sesame, a class on preparing shellfish. “We’ve had a 40-person butchering class,” Jeddis notes. “We brought in a whole pig, and the dishes were made from it.”
At Taste and Technique in Fair Haven, chef Heather Harm offers classes for what she terms recreational chefs, people who are “sick of making the same old stuff.” She aims for her classes to offer enhanced skills, whether a class requires participation (“In a hands-on class, you see how measuring flour in different ways affects the outcome,” Harm says) or keen observation, such as demonstration classes with renowned Jersey chefs such as Drew Araneo of Drew’s Bayshore Bistro in Keyport. “You’re not leaving here covered in flour, but you’ll still learn a thing or two,” Harm says.
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