Roast Chicken is sssssoooooo easy!

I can't believe how easy it is to cook roast chicken... this week went unbelieveable smoothly despite the fact that Nic was sitting an exam for the first half of the class and had me in charge of the Kitchen, setting up, shopping and starting the class. Thanks to Lorr, the chef who turned up early, we were well organised for when the students arrived. Though they didn't think much of my attempt at iced tea (not sure what went wrong..) the students were ready to go from the moment they walked in the door. First up we got one student up the front to help Lorr demonstrate how to prepare the chicken for roasting, she gloved up and quickly got into rubbing the il and herbs onto the chicken, so that we could get it into the oven in time t eat by the end of class...aparently a whole chicken takes an hour and a half to cook, and the chef was very surprised that we got it done on time. The chicken was then sealed in a pan (by a student) before roasting. For the rest of the class the girls "fought" over who "made" the chicken and which was more important. sealing or oiling! Either way it was perfectly moist and very tasty.

Next up we got everyone up to crumb up their own piece of veal snitzel, could have been incredably messy but due to an awesome tip from Lorr about "one hand for dry stuff and one for wet" we didnt end up with too many crumed fingers. In the mean time we had the students chopping up tonnes of cool incredients for a very funky greek salad, with crumbed fetta, yellow tomatoes, yellow capsicum, red onion, red tomatoes, cucumber and marinated olives which we pitted ourselves. We also had some salmon to add at the table, to cater for our peeps that don't eat fish.

We also had a col fruit salad with mango, honey dew melon, ruby red greatfruit and apple. Yummy.

All in all the meal was fantastic, I was really impressed by the snitzel, which i was actually expecting to be a little dodgy (though by the price of the meat you'd hope not). It was golden and crispy. Totally awesome, especially withthe salad and roast chicken to boot.

The best thing is that student numbers are growing and the kids skills are improving unbelievably. I feel like not only are they really enjoying eating the food, but really getting into the preparation part of the meal too. No problems finding someone to demonstrate in front of the class, everyone wants to have a go at everything! Now the only problem is finding enough stuff for them to fill the whole two hours, though it was great to have a little extra time to chat about the menu for the gala dinner and all the other things that are coming up.

I'm so proud of all the students, and so sad that I wont be able to see them graduate, having put a year into developing this program I'm also so relieved to have it up and runing and to have students actually enjoying it.

The coolest thing is that i cooked roast chicken for dinner tonight and didnt set the kitchen on fire! Amazing huh...