Sunday, February 22, 2004

Someone's in the kitchen with Mrs. Murphy: The taste of home comes without the fuss at York cooking class

By LAURA POPE

Sunday Citizen Correspondent

On the cresting wave of cooking classes now so popular across the nation, most are convened at upscale food stores or restaurant settings and most favor the demonstration mode, when participants sit back and watch. Sipping wine, of course, and nibbling at all the efforts of the chef du jour.

Sue Murphy of York, Maine, has taken a decidedly different tack. Instead of standing at a stove and preparing numerous menus in a three-hour class for others to observe, Murphy changes the dynamic by putting the adult students to work prepping, cooking and presenting the foods on this particular Thursday evening, the first in a new series of cooking classes for adults. On the menu are five courses of vegetarian fare.

Moreover, she has chosen her own home as the setting for the classes. Three large prep stations — enough space for the 10 students gathered — are fully furnished with recipe ingredients. Her living room has been transformed into a cozy café, complete with set dinner tables and a large buffet table soon to brim with foods from the night’s class called "Meals for the Family," which include Herbed Pasta Primavera, Hearty Rice Skillet, Bean-and-Cheese-filled Tortillas, Salad Nicoise and Apple Granola Burritos.

In the kitchen, a bulletin board hanging on one wall peppered with thank-you notes from her young students and on another wall, Murphy’s handmade logo for her business depicting a woman in blue flipping a pancake, are the only overt indications that this is more than someone’s private home kitchen.

Mrs. Murphy’s Kitchen is the name of the home-spun business Sue Murphy started two years ago at her Old Post Road home, initially to teach children, age 3 to 13, how to prepare meals.

"The leap to teaching grown-ups came from people asking me if I would consider teaching adults," said Murphy, adding her classes for children are quite successful. "For the 3-year-olds, we might decorate cookies, or they will help me add ingredients as I make a recipe such as the Apple Granola Burritos we are making tonight. These young ones learn about the importance of hand washing, how to measure amounts and about utensils. The older kids, the 13-year-olds, are more capable and we’ll make something such as Orzo Salad Stuffed Tomatoes."

At this inaugural adult class it becomes clear the evening is as much about camaraderie as it is about sharing good recipes and preparation tips.

"I wanted these classes to be a whole fun evening of dining experiences and meeting new people in a comfortable home setting," said Murphy, a cook from a young age, though not formally trained, born into a family of accomplished home cooks. Murphy’s daughter, Alexandra, 6, seems sure to inherit this knack for cooking at the home hearth, especially given all the children she has met who share a love of cooking. Since so many adults asked Murphy to teach a class for them, the York cook decided to keep her series focused on vegetarian cuisine and healthy eating.

"People want to have more vegetables in their diets and so the menus are vegetarian. The lion’s share of the menus I would call home-cooked meals though some of the items are gourmet-ish, such as the Chocolate French Toast with Banana Sauce, without all the difficulty of complex ingredients and instructions."

Murphy shares her own recipes with her classes as well as those culled from her large library of cookbooks, from friends and family, the Internet and from her own imagination.

"I try the recipes I find myself first, then I usually modify it."

"Five of us came to this class together tonight," said Shannon Paone, a dance instructor at the Brixham Dance Works in South Berwick, Maine, where she resides. "All of us dance there and next week we’re going to a dinner dance at Spring Hill."

Standing next to her, Pat Weightman, a nurse, also from South Berwick, chops vegetables and laughs, remembering a recent gathering of dance friends at a chicken pot pie cook-off at one of the friends’ home.

"I take jazz class with Shannon," said Weightman, helping Paone at one of the prep stations making Herbed Pasta Primavera. "It’s a group thing, this class, and we do other activities together."

With all burners aglow at the stove, teams making each recipe stir and converse, laugh and ask questions of Murphy, who modifies a recipe when one of the ingredients fails, and substitutes a vegetable in another recipe for added color. One of the students comments that the kitchen is filled with "Thanksgiving aromatherapy" from the Apple Granola Burritos while another praises the color and healthy alternative the Salad Nicoise would have at her looming Super Bowl party.

Once the recipes are finished and set on the buffet, out comes the wine participants have brought to complement the meal. Lighting candles in a circular, wrought-iron wall sconce in her makeshift café, Murphy announces that dinner is set and all ready to eat.

Each student leaves the kitchen and café with a packet containing that evening’s recipes on handy, ready-to-file index cards; a business card; a serving of Oregon Chai latte mix — and a lot of delicious memories and shared laughs.

The next class in the Mrs. Murphy’s Kitchen adult cooking class series is called Simple Elegance and is set for Thursday, Feb. 26 starting at 6 p.m. The menu for the evening includes Vegetable Upside-down Cake, Swiss Green Bean Salad, Boston Lettuce and Apple Salad with Spiced Nuts, Chocolate French Toast with Warm Banana Sauce and lastly, Faux Champagne and Faux Mimosas. Other Thursday night classes are Comfort Food with a Flair on March 18; A Taste of Mexico on April 15; Hors D’Oeuvres on May 20; and Getting Ready for Summer on June 24.

To register for a class, call Sue Murphy at (207) 363-4217; to learn more about her classes, visit her Web site at mrsmurphyskitchen.com. Each class costs $50, may be given as a gift certificate or may be taught to groups or organizations, such as ladies night out gatherings, couples or special parties.

© 2004 Geo. J. Foster Company