Cooking class: Gigi Cohen's Favourite recipes

We attended an awesome cooking class in December. In part it was awesome because of the food there but the other half of awesome-ness comes from the fact that it was taught by the mom of the girl who runs a delicious vegan, kosher foods place, Cafe Juicy Lotus, that I like to frequent. Her mom, Gigi Cohen has her own Harvard Cafe that is equally as kosher, more so vegetarian and great, though I only was there for the cooking class. However, I did have the pleasure of meeting Gigi once long before I ever thought to sign up for a cooking class with her. I was in Cafe Juicy Lotus buying some of my favourite spicy, stuffed grape leaves when Gigi, who was there helping out her daughter, mentioned the matzoh balls she had just made for Passover. I mentioned in passing that I had never had the chance to try matzoh ball soup and before I knew it, she had already stuffed a matzoh ball into my mouth.


I have the recipes from the class, but I'd like to try making them first before writing about them. However, I will share them all in this document named after the cooking class Gigi's Favourites. Although the cooking class involved doing no cooking, just eating, Gigi was so animated and passionate about food that it didn't matter at all. At the end of the class, I asked if I could have a picture with her to put on my food blog. She agreed and told me to share all of the recipes I learned with everyone because she just wants people to experience the food. What a lady.

Blurry phone picture. 

I will quickly mention though that the curry paste is the basic building block that flavours a lot of the dishes that we learned about, so make that bit first.

Gigi's Curry paste

Dry Ingredients
In a bowl, mix together the following spices:

1 tsp sweet paprika
A pinch of black pepper and sea salt
1 tbsp shredded, dehydrated, unsweetened coconut
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp dried, dehydrated parsley
A pinch of cayenne pepper
1 tsp nutritional yeast
A pinch of dried red chilies
1 tsp dried basil
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tsp sugar

(At this point you can keep this as the dry spice mix)
For the paste, add the following wet and fresh ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil
1 tbsp tamari
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
1/4 cup Apple Cider vinegar

Blitz 3 cloves of garlic and 1 piece of organic ginger, skin and all in a food processor. Add to the mixture.

Mix together and add some chopped fresh basil or parsley. Paste should keep for up to 6 months.