With three James Beard awards and a three-Michelin-starred restaurant, Chef Dominique Crenn has transcended traditional vegetarian fare by treating cooking as a kind of poetic expression. Now the celebrated chef invites you to discover inspired vegetarian cooking. Following a full tasting menu of recipes, learn how to elevate your techniques, minimize waste, and turn vegetarian dishes into works of art.
Overview
Syllabus
- Meet Your Instructor
- Chef Crenn shares her deep connection to food and how her passion evolved into a celebrated career that showcases vegetables as the main attraction. She also shares an overview of the class lessons, which are structured as a tasting menu.
- Dominique's Essential Kitchen Tools
- Explore Chef Crenn’s kitchen tools and special equipment for making modern vegetarian meals. Discover the pantry ingredients she always has on hand, including herbs and flowers.
- Tomato: Enhanced
- In the first of three tomato lessons, learn how to dehydrate tomatoes by blanching them. Then turn the skins into powder.
- Tomato: Illuminated
- Building on your blanching techniques, learn how to confit peeled tomatoes. You can also add the tomato petals you’ve already made to create a more intricate dish that can stand on its own or be incorporated into a recipe in the next tomato lesson.
- Tomato: Evolved
- Learn how to marinate tomatoes and make tomato water that you can turn into a gel. Then bring all of your new tomato techniques together in an elaborate dish.
- Melon: Enhanced
- Chef Crenn shows you how to check a melon for ripeness. Then she walks you through how to cut it, marinate it, and make it into ribbons.
- Melon: Illuminated
- Learn how to grill, roast, or cold smoke melon with Chef Crenn.
- Melon: Evolved
- Continue exploring the many forms melon can take. Turn melon balls into surprising shapes, make melon water that you can transform into gel, try out marinating and grilling your melon, and wrap up with an elevated fruit salad.
- Leeks
- Chef Crenn teaches you how to clean, confit, and roast leeks, and shows you the steps to make a warm vinaigrette. Prepare a béarnaise sauce to top it all off in an elegantly plated dish.
- Mushroom
- Learn how to make a mushroom stock that will serve as a base, along with vegetables, confit, and smoked egg yolks. Make mushroom foam, and slice and season mushrooms to incorporate into a beautiful dish.
- Asparagus
- Discover how delicious asparagus can be in three approaches: poached in vegetable stock, then grilled; peeled with a mandolin; and blanched and grilled to serve with crème fraîche.
- Seasonal Vegetables
- Chef Crenn shows you how to make a classic French comfort food, parmentier, using zucchini, onions, and carrots instead of meat. Prepare a smooth potato puree to use in the dish and top it with cheese in individual ramekins or a larger serving dish.
- Cabbage
- Often overlooked, cabbage is incredibly versatile. Learn how to sear and roast cabbage wedges, ferment sauerkraut, pickle mustard seeds, and make a potent parsley oil to create a delicious dish.
- Cheese
- In France, cheese and salad are served toward the end of a meal to cleanse the palate. For your final exercise, make a cheese mousse to be served in stylistically cut lettuce.
Taught by
Dominique Crenn
