Thursday, August 07, 2003

By Virginia Phillips

Lain Healey, 14, a round-lensed Harry Potter in white chef's coat and shorts, chats over his shoulder to classmates as he whisks egg yolks over simmering water.

	Lain Healey whisks mayonnaise during his final class in a weeklong "cooking camp" for 12- to 14-year-olds. (Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette) Details: Sewickley Cooking Studio For a class schedule, visit www.sewickleyculinary.com or call 412-741-8671.

The scene could be a Hogwarts potion class, but for the conspicuous absence of Hermione hairdos. Locks in the Sewickley Cooking Studio are professionally scrunched. Everybody's aproned. Maggie Stevenson, 14, wears a chef's hat. Alex Schollaert, wielding a 10-inch chef's knife, chops parsley, his left hand resting safely on top of the blade. Maggie doggedly peels a shallot.

Gaynor Grant's new teaching space, with its high ceilings, pale ochre walls and tall Victorian windows, has the intimacy of a one-room schoolhouse.

In any given week, pupils from first-graders to grandparents toil up the steep stairs to the second-floor classroom to meet the diminutive teacher with the lengthy credentials.

Grant, 54, hunched comfortably, forearms on the worktable, tosses wisecracks in a rapid-fire British accent. Her offhand warmth disarms most students -- tots consigned to "summer camp" by moms, teens with a million distractions, adults who are all focus if a bit uptight about knife skills.

The casual style is deceptive.

Except for a few fluff courses such as the one-shot Couples Night, students work through a demanding series of three to five lessons. They prepare age-appropriate multiple dishes illustrating a dense curriculum. Each class builds on techniques learned in the last. The heart of the curriculum, The Art of Fine Cooking, offers six units of five classes. Shorter units teach baking and world cuisines.

The "building block" structure is a product of Grant's classical French training and 18 years' teaching. She was the protege of Peter Kump, the late head of the respected Peter Kump Cooking School in Manhattan.

Kump was trained by James Beard. With teacher and cookbook author Barbara Kafka and chef/restaurateur Larry Forgione, Kump arranged to buy Beard's New York town house to house a culinary foundation. The Beard House today is host to events where America's emerging chefs strut their stuff. It also honors outstanding American food writers and cookbook authors.

From being Kump's star pupil, Grant evolved to administrator of the school. At his request, she launched satellite schools in New Jersey and later in Pittsburgh. When Kump became ill, he made plans to sell the business to Grant and her husband/business partner, Dan. Dan, a computer consultant, flew in 1985 to New York, investors in place, to seal the deal. He was met at the plane with the news that Kump had died and that the school's future had vanished into inheritance limbo.

The Sewickley Studio is the only school teaching the Peter Kump method, the Grants believe. The Walnut Street space in Sewickley, open since February, is also the first "home" base for Grant's classes and catering service. The downtown Sewickley spot offers a welcome relief from lugging pots to rented locations. A second kitchen is under construction down the hall.

Graduation day

This is the final class in a weeklong "cooking camp" for 12- to 14-year-olds.

The topic is mayonnaise.

Lain returns to the stove with new yolks; the first batch got too hot and "scrambled."

"I could do demos -- but to learn, you really should do it yourself," Grant stresses.

The approach is down to earth.

Mixers and processors are available, but students learn that there is satisfaction in whipping egg whites stiff using a whisk in a copper bowl. Juice pours from lemon halves assaulted with a wooden reamer. Citrus rind is scraped on a Saran-wrapped box grater, the plastic wrap catching the bits. This teacher has yet to buy herself a nifty rasp grater.

Though Paris is Mecca for Grant and French cooking shapes her teaching, she tries not to be a food snob.

"I hate food snobs. Kump, for example, never worked in a restaurant. Just because people cook in restaurants doesn't mean they can teach." In the tones of a hoity-toity chef: " 'I have to have three crates of raspberries.'

"Sorry. It's more like being a mum -- what will we have for dinner?

"Well, what have I got?"

Another question might be why does this teacher have half a loaf of Town Talk bread on the counter? The answer: the first-graders used some for fluffy banana-stuffed French toast. Adult classes will cut rounds with the rest, sauteing them in clarified butter to make crisp pillows for their poached eggs in meurette sauce, a classic French red wine sauce. "The meurette sauce is a nice change from eggs Benedict. Besides, I don't like waste."

Ingredients come from the supermarket: "When I started teaching you couldn't find fresh basil in New York. Now the Robinson Giant Eagle has haricots verts [skinny French green beans]."

Techniques will set you free

Gaynor Grant, right, discusses the intricacies of making mayonnaise with class members, from left, Diane Nitberg, 13; Rebecca Hetzell, 14; and Maggie Stevenson, 14. (Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette)

Soon seven whisks clatter in seven metal bowls. As the right hand whisks yolks, the left dribbles in oil from a measuring cup, the bowl secured by a rolled-up ring of kitchen towel. Recipes are vehicles to teach techniques, Grant emphasizes, not the other way around.

Eggs provide a world of technique.

The junior high kids see Potter magic as each person's bowl of yolks and oil "emulses" into a rich and silky sauce.

"Why is store mayo white instead of yellow?" asks Maggie.

"Probably because it is not made with whole eggs like this."

Grant explains how they will season the homemade mayonnaise. They will create classic French variations that can make the mundane memorable -- say, a hamburger, raw vegetables, cold chicken, even hard-cooked eggs -- and the luxury foods like lobster into legends.

The students chop.

"What's feen hurbs?" asks Lauren, pronouncing the herbes in fines herbes with a hard "aitch," British-style, the way her teacher says "hurbs" when she is speaking about any old herbs.

"Anything you like," says Grant, "parsley, basil, chives."

"I love garlic," says Hilary Brown, 14, inhaling deeply. She wears a Quaker Valley sweatshirt. All seven students go to QV. "I think I've been wanting to be a chef pretty much forever."

Alex is considering a chef's life too. Others are noncommittal. Rebeccah Hetzell, 14, signed up because Lauren Castner, 14, talked her into it.

Lain makes Dijonnaise, which requires him to add a "noticeable" amount of Dijon mustard. Maggie makes echalote, flavored with chopped shallots.

Dollops fly as the variations are tasted on carrot sticks. The shallot version is a hit. Alex is frank: He doesn't find that "the way mayo looks is appetizing at all."

Burgers, grilled, and brown-sugared peach halves, broiled, will illustrate how grilling and broiling are different from sauteing, or cooking with fat in a pan. The dry direct heat "imparts a smoky flavor" and is a "lean" way of cooking.

The students mix chopped onion, sour cream and raw egg into ground beef. Pasta salad and coleslaw will showcase the mayo.

As students form patties for themselves, a negative vote for raw onion appears here and there, little mounds tweaked out of the mix.

Grant is unfazed by food preferences. At home she struggles to hold on to dinner hour. She remembers how she "relished" midday Sunday dinner, always with a roast, growing up outside Stratford, England.

"If at all possible, I'll try to get us all together to eat four or five times a week. Invariably someone doesn't like it or hasn't time to eat."

Andy, 16, Alex, 14, and Megan, 10, are involved in sports. Dan was a basketball star at England's Portsmouth University and later a pro basketball player while Gaynor was earning a hotel and catering degree at Portsmouth. He directs coaching for the Sewickley community soccer program. The town's U-14 Hotspurs won the 2003 indoor national tournament.

Gaynor suggests cheese, salsa or mustard to flavor the students' burger mix. Susan Nitzberg, 13, opts for ginger and sesame oil. Lain adds "a pinch" of Party Time lemonade mix. "Did you really?" says Grant without enthusiasm.

"Some kids eat nothing. When I ask the 6-year-olds, don't you want to taste what you made? They'll say, 'Could I just take it home?' "

A surprise hit with the crayon crowd was BLT soup. They loved the crunchy bacon bits, shredded lettuce and chopped tomato simmered in a creamy chicken broth.

These junior high students applauded an old English standby, apple snow, whipped egg white, poached, with applesauce and a caramel sauce.

In the adult class, old dogs learn new tricks.

Maria Swanson, 39, blond mom of four, the oldest 13, makes a cell phone call to assure herself the kids turned off the oven. Glen Mauney, 54, is enrolled, thanks to his wife's gift, staking him and their son to the series. Chris Mauney, 22, rushes in late, flushed with sunburn. After a day's landscape work topped off with a community soccer game, he's loving the chance to sit down and chop parsley.

Egg magic is featured again. Eggs cooked in their shells ("overcooking makes that black edge on the yolks") and out of their shells. Omelets ("Cook quick, quick, quick on high heat") and souffle variations ("It's an old wives' tale you can't open the door and check on them.")

Glen tells how he and Chris re-created last week's menu at home, from the egg lemon soup and tarragon chicken with Provencale tomatoes, to pitting cherries for clafouti, a French custard dessert. It was a lot of cleanup, he admits. Mauney senior, a business executive, loves the class for its "discipline and kitchen science." Mauney junior, off to England in the fall, likes learning about things "like a cheese course after the entrZee. It's not just food intake."

Swanson has translated her enthusiasm into conning her kids into making dinner once a week. She likes Grant's menus: "These are things you can make regularly."

KIDS R COOKS BLT SOUP

This creamy soup wowed the first-graders. At first they thought it was very funny to cook lettuce.

• 5 slices bacon, diced
  
• 2 tablespoons butter
  
• 3 1/2 cups iceberg lettuce, shredded
  
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
  
• 3 1/2 cups chicken stock or broth
  
• 3/4 cup chopped tomatoes
  
• Pinch of nutmeg
  
• Pinch of cayenne pepper
  
• 1 cup hot half and half

Cook bacon in a large pan over medium heat until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Do not drain fat.

Add the butter and cook until it is melted. Add the lettuce and cook for 2 minutes over medium heat.

Whisk in the flour and stir until the mixture comes to a boil.

Remove from heat and stir in the chicken stock and tomato. Add the nutmeg and cayenne.

Heat the soup again until it's boiling, stirring frequently. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for about 6 minutes, stirring occasionally until thickened.

Stir in the half and half and serve hot.

Serves 6.

Gaynor Grant, Sewickley Cooking Studio

Virginia Phillips is a freelance food writer based in Mt. Lebanon.

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