Last weekend, three of my friends and I took a cooking class with Chef Todd Gray of Equinox Restaurant in Washington, DC.
We had two requests for ingredients to be used during the class – risotto and, of course, bacon.
The way the class works is that the Chef sets up cooking stations at the bar, and ‘students’ sit at the bar and taste each course as it is prepared (in addition to consuming a healthy amount of wine – particularly for 1 o’clock in the afternoon – but I’m not complaining!).
Chef Gray prepared three courses for us. The first was a Butternut Squash Risotto served with scallops, leaks and truffle sauce. I’m generally not a big truffle fan, but the truffle sauce was done so well that it complemented the other flavors in the dish and was not overwhelming at all.
The main course was a BBQ pork loin with potatoes, sweet onions and applewood bacon. That dish was delicious, of course – you can’t go wrong when pork loin and bacon are together in the same dish. Chef Gray also prepared a batch of his signature BBQ sauce for us to taste – his BBQ sauce has bacon in it, is relatively simple to make and is very tasty. I’ll definitely be whipping up a batch next time I throw something on the barbie.
For dessert, we had a yummy chocolate “Maker’s Mark” cake, along with a few glasses of port to leave us properly pickled for the rest of the afternoon.
The class was a lot of fun, and I would definitely recommend it as a fun thing to do with friends on a Saturday afternoon. But in general, Equinox is one of the best restaurants in DC and I recommend checking it out if you’re ever in town.