Issue Date: October 3, 2004
Virtual cooking
Learn to break an egg, roast a duck and bake a cake online.
By Laura Daily
Learn from top chefs and culinary icons without ever leaving your own kitchen.
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With a computer in your kitchen, you can learn to sauté, chiffonade or parboil without ever opening a cookbook or leaving home. Best of all, virtual cooking lessons mean you can make mistakes without anyone seeing them. A growing number of Web sites boast step-by-step instructions (complete with photos and/or videos), detailed recipes and Q&A forums.
"The great thing about online cooking classes is you can take any subject, anytime, anyplace on your schedule," says Steven Shaw of the eGullet Culinary Institute. Courses and instruction levels run the gamut.
Here's a tasty sampling of classes:
Even the famed Culinary Institute of America in upstate New York has bitten into e-learning, via Prochef.com. Get freebie videos of chefs at work; serious cooks can even work toward culinary certification by enrolling in professional programs (classes start at $295). Students complete at-home assignments, take tests online, and even discuss successes and flops with instructors, yep, online.
FabulousFoods.com was founded in 1997 by Cheri Sicard of Los Angeles with a simple glossary that's grown to 100-plus free tutorials. Professional food writers generate recipes (accompanied by high-quality photos) on everything from Stock Making 101 to carving a fruit basket from a watermelon.
Not only does Chef Eric Arrouze of Vancouver, British Columbia, create the more than 300 recipe-based classes on www.911cheferic.com, but he also agrees to be on call practically 24/7 to students via e-mail or cellphone. Text is free, but to view the images included with each recipe, students dish up $7 a month. Arrouze, who teaches traditional French cuisine at the University of British Columbia, adds new recipes (such as Alsatian apple tart and Express Mayonnaise) every week or so.
New York food writer Shaw (a k a Fat Guy) launched the eGullet Culinary Institute (egullet.org) last year with four classes. Now there are dozens. Among the most popular: Understanding Stove Top Cookware, Pit Roasting a Pig and Introduction to Lebanese Cuisine. For the most part, classes mix text and practical photos, although, in All About Eggs, there's a slick animation showing how to flip an omelet correctly. Voilà!
If you want a top-notch instructor like the late Julia Child, why settle for less than the master herself? Get the complete library of Julia Child's Lessons With Master Chefs via streaming video at pbs.org/juliachild. Choose by ingredient or food category from among more than 100 half-hour programs. Sear scallops alongside celeb chef Charlie Trotter or whip up a crème fraîche custard brioche tart guided by Nancy Silverton. The down-to-earth Child is always on hand to keep you from feeling too culinarily challenged, and you can replay the steps as often as you like at your own pace. Your flubs wouldn't have bothered Julia.
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