By Peter Covino

Entertainment Editor

Sometimes, if you are lucky, during a dining experience you get to meet the restaurant’s executive chef.

At the Downtown Disney Levy’s Restaurants adult cooking class, you learn how to make some innovative dishes from three executive chefs.

This was the second in a series of chef experiences. The restaurant group held a class for youngsters several weeks ago. But this time it was the adults’ turn.

The cooking experience is a fun way to learn some new techniques in the kitchen and it is geared toward both the novice and somewhat experienced home chef.

First stop on the three restaurant tour was the upstairs dining room at Wolfgang Puck Café. If you have been to the Downtown Disney restaurant before and had sushi or one of their pizzas, maybe you longingly looked to that staircase and wondered what dining was like upstairs.

The adult cooking class not only gives you a chance to dine upstairs, but participate in the cooking as well.

Executive Chef Sinclair Thorne is the man wearing the chef’s apron and today’s menu features “Maryland style” crab cakes.

Thorne, like all three chefs in the cooking class, take the complication out of cooking.

“This is a quick recipe,” he promises. And he is right. He gets some help from a few volunteers in the class to help prepare and mix the ingredients (crab, celery, shallots, butter, mayonnaise, sugar, Japanese bread crumbs, kosher salt, Old Bay seasoning, ground black pepper and cayenne pepper).

Before he can even read off the list of the ingredients, this delectable crab cake dish is just about done.

One tip for uniform-sized crab cakes...buy a small PVC pipe mold. The smaller shapes make great ring molds.

Each stop on the restaurant tour includes a take-home recipe and more information.

Each course also includes an accompanying wine. At Wolfgang Puck’s it was Concerto Grunerveltliner, from the Wolfgang Vineyards in Austria.

The class of about 25 walks pretty much the length of Downtown Disney for the second stop on the cooking class tour — Fulton’s Crab House.

Executive Chef Ron Cope leads the class time and the dish is St. Augustine, Florida yellowtail snapper.

But this time out, the class will be making their own entrée, or at least preparing it.

Everyone dons an apron and everything you need to make the dish (yellowtail snapper filet, julienne cut yellow squash, zucchini and carrots, shaved fennel, sliced lemon circles, fresh thyme, kosher salt, ground black pepper, blended olive oil and parchment paper) are laid out in front of each guest. Cooking should always be this easy.

After cutting the parchment paper down to size, it is simply a matter of coating the paper with olive oil and place the fish and the rest of the ingredients in the center of the paper and folding it over into a nice, tightly sealed package.

The cooks at Fulton’s do the rest and soon you are in the dining room (with a great view of Downtown Disney) eating your perfectly cooked dish.

And yes, there is more wine, this time, a Fulton’s white wine.

It is just a short trip for dessert, at Portobello, located right next to Fulton’s.

Executive Steven Richard has chosen something simple and seasonal, Panna Cotta with Florida peach.

The custard dessert requires no cooking, Richard said, and is readily adaptable to any seasonal fruit. The restaurant tries to use whatever fruit is in season with this signature dessert.

Again, it is very easy to prepare. The custard requires heavy cream, honey, sugar, vanilla ex-tract and perhaps the hardest to find ingredient – gelatin sheets.

Gelatin sheets work much better (to thicken the custard) than powdered gelatin, but it is a specialty item that is not found readily in most grocery stores.

The sauce for the custard features a cup of peach flesh, a simple syrup of sugar and waster, honey and lemon to taste.

The prepared custard is poured into molds or containers. There is room for a lot creativity, Richard said, anything from a martini glass to even a large plastic Asian soup spoon.

The sauce is poured over the cooled custard. The custard is then garnished with fresh berries and white chocolate curls, but again, there is room for a lot creativity with garnishes and sauces, he said.

The accompanying wine selection featured a choice

of Banfi Rosa Regale, a sparkling red sweet wine, or Cantina di Casteggio Moscato Dolce dell’ Oltrepo Pavese, a sweet white wine.

Cost for the class was $59.95 per person.

Levy's Restaurants plans on holding more dining classes in the future.

oooo

If your dream has been to spend a day in the kitchen of a chef’s restaurant learning culinary secrets and techniques, enter Chef Jean-Stephane Poinard’s competition to win ‘My Day in a Chef’s Kitchen’ that celebrates his restaurant’s 2nd Anniversary. The Bistro de Leon opened summer, 2008 in historic St. Augustine and has become one of the city’s most popular casual Bistros serving authentic cuisine from Chef’s hometown of Lyon, France.

Chef Poinard’s style is ‘classic & contemporary’ – comfort food prepared with authentic French flair. His dream was to own a restaurant in America where he could offer a great lifestyle to his family and St. Augustine’s European atmosphere was a perfect match to ‘la cuisine de meres’ (French home cuisine). Poinard believes “This is a restaurant that fits into its neighborhood. It’s a small cozy café in a cozy and friendly town”.

OFFICIAL RULES:

Write 150 word essay about why I want to win “My Dream Day in a Chef’s Kitchen”

Entry must include a dream dish you would like to prepare and what Chef secret you’d like to learn

Include name, address, telephone #. Entries based on originality.

Send entry via email only to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Deadline for entries is July 30, 2010

Entrants must be 18 years or older

All entries become the property of Bistro de Leon

The GRAND PRIZE Winner Receives:

Meet Chef Jean-Stephane Poinard at Bistro de Leon

Spend one day (10am – 3pm) in Chef’s Kitchen preparing a surprise ‘dream’ dish and learning some of Chef’s culinary secrets and techniques

Dinner for Two at Bistro de Leon redeemable through December 1, 2010

WHO CAN ENTER:   Entrants must be 18 or over. There are no substitutions or transfer of prizes. Prizes are not redeemable for cash. By acceptance of prizes, winner consents to use of their names and/or photographs for publicity purposes without further compensation. Winner will be notified by August 3, 2010.

BISTRO DE LEON

12 Cathedral Place

St. Augustine, Florida 32084

904-810-2100

www.bistrodeleon.com