Hey Michelin, I’m ready for my star

August 5, 2008 · Filed Under An American Expat in Deutschland, Food and Drink 

For my birthday last year, Rainer got me a cooking class with star chef Christian Graf von Walderdorff at the Restaurant Rosenpalais. I was pregnant at the time, and during my pregnancy, I couldn’t stand to touch raw meat and the thought of fish made me nauseous. I decided to put off the class, and I kept putting it off, and off, until this past Saturday.

The class started at 10am and ran till 2:30pm, with a light lunch that we prepared together with the chef. During our approximately 3.5 hours in the kitchen we prepared the menu that we would be eating together later that evening.

Our menu consisted of:

  • Pressack vom Oktopus mit klarem Tomatensugo (octopus cold cuts with clear tomato sauce)
  • Salzwassergarnelen mit dreierlei Fenchel und Gnocchi (salt water shrimp with three types of fennel and gnocchi)
  • Etouffé Taube mit Blattspinat in der Artischocke gegart auf Selleriepüree (smothered pigeon with spinach cooked in an artichoke served with celery purée)
  • Schokoladenkrapfen mit Gewürzorangen (chocolate doughnuts with orange sauce)

I basically worked on the etouffé pigeon dish, starting with cutting the meat from one of the pigeons, to helping to pull the cooked meat off the leg bones, to cutting out an artichoke heart, to chopping the shallots for the stuffing, to assembling the ingredients, to wrapping the entire assembly in caul fat. Apart from that, I also helped form the gnocchi. By the way, etouffé here means that the pigeon was suffocated and the blood was left in the bird (instead of the typical slaughter method of cutting off the head and draining the blood). Yes, the pigeons had heads when we got ‘em, and no, this was not disturbing to me at all; I grew up with a Thai mother, animal heads were common place in our kitchen.

We reassembled in the evening and sat out in the restaurant’s lovely garden courtyard for our meal. I really had a ball getting to know the fellow students better and I gotta say, we prepared a pretty damn good meal. I especially loved the shrimp course. Handmade gnocchi are not that hard to make and are totally delicious and worth the effort. I’m not sure I can eat non-handmade gnocchi anymore (according to the chef, Rosenpalais is the only place in Regensburg where you can get handmade gnocchi).  I’ve put the Gnocchi recipe we used up on my recipe pages (translated to English and with some detail added in).

Rainer declared Rosenpalais to be the best restaurant we’ve been to in Regensburg (I’d agree), and in case you were wondering, Oliver loved the octopus and the shrimp dish, along with the raw salmon amuse geule we had. He breastfeed through the pigeon, and spit out the chocolate dessert. Strange kid, I know!

In the end, it was really a blast and I’d love to do it again sometime. I highly recommend the Rosenpalais course as a present for your foodie loved ones in the Regensburg area. Don’t live in Regensburg? Try searching for a cooking class in your area (“Kochkurs” auf Deutsch).

At the Rosenpalais cooking class

That’s me preparing the etouffé pigeon next to the chef

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Comments

5 Responses to “Hey Michelin, I’m ready for my star”

  1. Sarah on August 6th, 2008 10:57 am

    Wow! That sounds like a great time. Are you going to bring any of your new-found expertise home to your kitchen?

    By the way, cute picture (although the hair-to-face ratio is a little high!). I like that you wore a top with roses on it to the Rosenpalais. :)

  2. Hezamarie on August 6th, 2008 11:44 am

    A really great pic of you!

    I’m totally jealous you got to cook/eat so many different
    foods just for lunch!

  3. Diane Mandy on August 6th, 2008 5:04 pm

    What a cool idea!

    Diane Mandys last blog post..Not for the faint of heart…

  4. barbara on August 7th, 2008 10:43 am

    Hi Christina,
    This is fabulous ! What agreat idea and it’s very nice to reward yourself to something that you enjoy.
    You are looking great in your photo ;)

    Have a nice day.

    barbaras last blog post..More challenges

  5. Christina G on August 9th, 2008 9:21 am

    @sarah: I am! I’m thinking of trying to make the gnocchi sometime. Maybe you guys can come over and we can do it together if you want.

    @hezamarie, dianemandy, barbara: It was so much fun! I highly recommend a cooking class as a present if the person likes to cook.

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