In the culinary alphabet, C is for… cookware, Corelle, (Le) Creuset, Cuisinart, CucinaPro and Calphalon. But did you know that Calphalon is more than just great cookware?

Sometime last year, I won a gift certificate for a cooking demo class at the Calphalon Culinary Centre in Toronto. It just goes to show how crazy my life has been that I only found the time to use it last week!  Now don’t get me wrong, I would be at a Calphalon class every week if I had the time, their offerings are interesting and varied:

Demo classes teach tips and techniques to use in your own kitchen. Taught by a professional chef, each class offers a three course menu demonstrated by the chef step by step, before your very eyes. You get to sample each dish the chef prepares and leave with the recipes and knowledge you need to make them at home!

Hands on classes work in a beautifully outfitted kitchen with twelve cooking stations and all the cookware, utensils, and accessories you need.  Students prepare an entire menu from start to finish, and enjoy the fruits of their labour afterwards!

Specialty classes (workshops and shopping excursions) allow you to explore a chosen culinary focus in more depth.  From classes that help you master the classics, to educational excursions to local markets shopping for the freshest staples and rare ingredients, these are all-encompassing foodie experiences.

Wine Classes at the Calphalon Culinary Center include wine basics, regional varieties, wine and food pairings, and much more. Classes feature 4-7 new wines, and a professional wine consultant as Guest Speaker.

(information adapted from the Calphalon website)

Calphalon has a culinary centre in Chicago as well – if you live there or are visiting, be sure to check their calendar.

I chose to attend the Parisian Pleasures demo class with Neil,  since I am desperately missing Paris in the summer and any way I can even remotely pretend I am there will do for right now…

We arrived at 6.oo sharp and ordered some wine. It’s very civilised!

And the chef prepared a “small snack” for us to tide us over until the salad was ready.  Most people had salmon, chef prepared a special asparagus plate for me.

And yes, that’s a “small snack” :-O

The first item on the menu was an Endive and Pear Salad with Bacon-Roquefort Vinaigrette.  A fabulous combination of sweet and savoury – this salad was Paris all over.

Even though each recipe had a “featured” Calphalon product, it was not a big hard sell like the free demo class I recently attended at Williams Sonoma was. I found this a refreshing change. Great products speak for themselves, right?

The main course was a classic – steak-frites.

LOVED this!  Perfectly cooked steak. Crunchy on the outside, fluffy on the inside frites and lovely green beans. Vive le steak-frites!

For dessert? What’s more classic than a crème brûlée?

I enjoyed the flavours of this a lot, but prefer my crème brûlées to be in aslightly more shallow dish. The taste, however, was spot on.

(All recipes courtesy of Calphalon)

Neil and I thoroughly enjoyed this demonstration.  Not sure we learned a lot as I find it’s hard to learn when you’re just watching – I am more of a hands-on type – but it was lovely to sit back and let someone else cook a French-inspired meal and enjoy a glass of wine at the same time.  After the demo, we went shopping in the store (bien sûr!) where I spent a good portion of my generous birthday gift certificate Whilst we most certainly did not leave empty-handed, we did leave a few items on the shelves that we *really* wanted…

Shortly afterwards, I was contacted by CSN stores who, after generously supplying me with a gorgeous item for my first ever giveaway back in December, wondered if I might like a product for review.  Both Neil and I spent a long time debating what we actually needed versus what we wanted.  I vaguely toyed with the idea of new dinnerware, but we ended up choosing something that we very nearly bought at Calphalon that night – a smaller stock pot than our gigantic one that is just not very practical for everyday use.  I am so excited to test drive this gorgeous piece from Le Creuset:

The Le Creuset 8-Quart Stock Pot in Cobalt

At George Brown Chef School, Neil and I always covet the stock pots that are the perfect size for chilis and hearty winter stews and we drooled over a gorgeous stock pot at Calphalon on the night of the demo.  Unfortunately, my birthday gift certificate couldn’t stretch that far so this opportunity to try out a brand I don’t own one single piece of (the shame!) came along just at the right time.  This will come in very handy during the busy first term at school when making large batches of sauces, stews and soups is a life-saver!  You can expect a review sometime in the next month or so