Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Cooking in Cozumel

We only took one of the paid Cruise excursions while we were on our trip.  Most of the excursions were things like snorkeling or day at the beach or ATVs and I wasn't interested in things like that.  What I was interested in was cooking.  The Mexican Cooking class in Cozumel sounded more my style. 

I was a little worried when they shuffled us onto these large Greyhound like buses and shuttled us to a very busy, very touristy looking resort.  Luckily, I was completely wrong in being worried.  Our class was a hoot, especially our instructor Luis.  Unfortunately the only shot I got of him was in the top photo, far left.

We had 4 students to each cooking station.  We made a chipotle shrimp sope appetizer, pan seared grouper with veggies for our main dish, and sauteed plantains with a chocolate sauce for dessert.  Sope is like an extra thick tortilla that you pinch the sides to make a little cup to put ingredients and sauce in.  I am going to experiment cooking some sope tonight. 

We all had to wear hairnets and chefs hats and were taught the correct way to wash our hands.  

Here's my sope before I sprinkled some paprika on top.  That's cream decorating the plate.  Yum!  Before I realized we had to share the chipotle for the shrimp with the other couple at our station, I dumped all of it in our saute pan.  Oops!  I had to sheepishly ask for more chipotle for the others to use.  The sauce was delectable!  

I tried to let Trevor do a lot of the cooking but I kept taking over without thinking about it.   I don't think he minded, though.  Note the cups of margaritas that we were continually served while we were cooking!   

The instructors served us all what we made and we had to put our names on our plates so they could keep track.   Makes me want to get some squeeze bottles and decorate our dinner plates at home. 
I highly recommend following Luis on both Facebook and Twitter.  His Facebook page is E-Z Cook 4 All and he posts lots of photos and easy, quick recipes.  Same goes for his Twitter, Chef Luis Esquivel.

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