Thursday, February 28, 2013

Enter Your Best Pesach Dessert in CKCA's New Recipe Contest!


CKCA is on the hunt for our community's greatest Pesach desserts recipes! From nutty to chocolately, from fruity to icy, we know there's a lot of delicious things in store for us this Pesach. If you make something delectable on Pesach, we want to know about it. Email your recipe to contest@kosherculinaryarts.com by March 14, and we will select 10 finalists, ask them to submit a picture of their completed dessert, and put it to our Facebook fans for a vote. There will be two winners: One non-Gebrochts dessert and one Gebrochts. Both winners will receive bragging rights, a $75 gift certificate toward classes at CKCA, and the recipes will be featured on our website and published in our Pesach recipe newsletter.

For continual updates on CKCA's Pesach Desserts Recipe contest, make sure to "like" us on Facebook, and sign up to receive our recipe newsletters by visiting http://www.kosherculinaryarts.com and enter your email address in the top right-hand corner. 

And if you want to learn to create amazing Pesach desserts this year, then sign up for CKCA's Pesach desserts class on March 10! Click here for more info


***CKCA reserves the right to edit recipes for spelling and grammar, and will do our best to ensure that all recipe ingredients adhere to strict kosher for Passover standards before publishing. One recipe may be submitted per person.***

Monday, February 18, 2013

Top Three Reasons To Take CKCA Pro Class in the Spring!

Our professional training program in culinary arts is 152 hours of hands-on training in professional level culinary skills & techniques. 

Our professional training program in baking & pastry arts is 152 hours of hands-on training in the fundamental skills & techniques of the bakeshop. 

Spring Semester Dates
April 8 to June 6th, 2013
Culinary Arts: Monday through Friday, 9am to 1pm
Baking & Pastry Arts: Monday through Thursday, 2pm to 6pm

We offer these courses four times a year, but the best time the take them is in the Spring. And here's why!

Smaller Class Size




3. Smaller class size = more personal attention. Summer and Fall our the most popular times of the year and therefore the busiest semesters. The spring is quieter and therefore class sizes are smaller. You get more personal attention from the same amazing chef instructors. 



Perfect Cooking Weather


2. The kitchen is a hot place, especially in the summer. Learning to cook during a temperate time of year is more comfortable! It's a great time to be in NYC as well; not too hot or humid. 



Spring Produce





1. The freshest vegetables and herbs come to market at this time of year. Only Spring semester students get the chance to work with such top-notch, local products. 


Follow this link for admissions information for the Spring Semester, which begins April 8th, and apply now! Don't miss this amazing opportunity! It only comes once a year!

Monday, February 4, 2013

Makin' Facon on Date Night

Facon; beauty shot courtesy of Jack's Gourmet.


Ahh, Bacon.... 

 Many a kosher foodie, ba'al Teshuvah, and the like have longed for its smokey, salty goodness and mourned its absence from the kosher table, sighing every time a recipe insisted on its inclusion. Pine no more friends, a worthy substitute has finally arrived. 

Please welcome FACON by Jack's Gourmet. Previous bacon wannabees have by all accounts fallen short in taste, texture, and appearance. Turkey bacon; too lean, no texture. Beef fry; nothing more than fatty corned beef or pastrami. Vegetarian bacon; give me a break. If all others have failed, why has Jack's succeeded? 

 Jack's Genius 

 First, there's the meat. Facon is beef. But not just any beef. This is beef cut from the part of the steer that is the anatomical equivalent of pork belly which is the part of the pig that bacon is made from. This beefy cut is streaked with fatty goodness, just like bacon, which renders when cooked allowing the meat to cook up nice and crisp. Second, Facon is prepared just like the real thing. It is dry cured with salt and sugar and flavored with smoke. Jack's blend has captured the salty, smoky balance that bacon is relished for. The bottom line is, Facon looks, tastes, and cooks like the real thing (or so we've been told by several reliable authorities). So much so that kosher restaurant chefs have been gobbling it up in wholesale, slab form for all types of inspired, chef worthy applications. (Jack's was completely sold out of the slab when we placed our order.) 

 Facon Meets Date Night 

We decided to have fun with Facon in our own way; by experimenting on unsuspecting Date Night participants! For the uninitiated, Date Night Couples Competition is our Chopped style culinary competition class for couples. One of our most popular classes, Date Night challenges couples to create an inspired entree from a basket of secret ingredients. On this special night the basket included; chicken breast, green lentils, oranges, swiss chard, and of course, Facon. We were highly impressed with the creative applications the students came up for the Facon; cooked crisp and crumbled on top of a salad, braised with greens, incorporated into a stuffing for the chicken... Ironically, several of the couples present this evening happened to be non-kosher keeping. All of them said the same thing; Facon tastes likes the real thing!

Here's a few highlights:
Lentils braised with facon





 Squash & Swiss Chard salad with crumbled Facon






Chicken stuffed with mustard & Facon stuffing





Facon, by Jack's Gourmet is now available in kosher retail outlets across the country. For more information about Facon or any of Jack's Gourmet's other products, visit their website.