Cooking Class: Seafood 101

In an effort to both further our attempts at a healthy lifestyle and find something new to do as a couple, Tony and I signed up for a one night cooking class: Seafood 101. The class was held at one of our local markets called Central Market. If you're in Texas I recommend that you find your local location. We don't eat a lot of fish in the Musick house, not because we don't like it, but because I'm not super confident in my ability to select and cook GOOD seafood, especially where we live. We are pretty much land locked and only have close access to gulf seafood, so much of what is purchased here has to be frozen and flown in, but there are places that you can buy really great seafood, such as Central Market. So we figured if there was a place to learn about and find the good stuff, it was here. So let's dig right in...

The first thing that we did was take a tour of their seafood market to learn more about selecting appropriate seafood for a particular season or recipe. All of the fish in their market is labeled with the location it was caught, so we also learned which fish were best from particular regions of the world. We also got some insider tips on how their particular market worked in regards to the safety and maintenance of their fish.

There were a couple of things that I really loved about this class in particular: (1) We used a couple of kinds of fish that I never even eaten, let alone prepared. (2) We used a different preparation method for 5 different dishes, so there was really got a broad spectrum of ways that fish can be cooked.

When you select a class, you can elect a hands on approach or just a demonstration. We went hands on so we could get up close and personal with the fish. They have you chop, taste, mix, even handle the cooking.