LEWISTON — As chef Dan Caron demonstrated how to take white wine, shallots and butter and create a beurre blanc seafood sensation, Daniela Staton stood watching with other students.

Staton, a Food Network fan, loves to cook and wants to cook better. So far, in her basic culinary class, she has made scones, cream puffs, eclairs, pie crust and bread.

“It literally blew my mind that I could do them and they actually taste better than anything I’ve bought,” Staton said.

The Green Ladle culinary school opened in 2008 for high school students. Soon, Lewiston Adult Education began offering classes for adults. There’s a steady flow of people interested in restaurant careers, but “foodies” are also taking classes. Foodies are defined as amateurs who want to learn all they can about food: new ingredients, new recipes, better ways to prepare and serve.

When the Green Ladle opens a new adult ed cooking class, “within three days people are calling me — ‘Dan, your class is booked and I wanted to get in,'” Caron said.

The heightened interested is fueled by cooking shows exploding on television: “Rachael Ray,” “Emeril Live,” “Top Chef,” “Iron Chef,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Cake Boss.”

Adult students know the vocabulary, Caron said. “They know what a roux is. They know the five mother sauces.”

Food tastes have grown more sophisticated, he said. “Five years ago, people were afraid of avocados.” Now they embrace avocados, sun-dried tomatoes and capers.

Classes include a 15-week culinary course that costs $500, and a slew of workshops that cost between $14 and $35. Workshops include
how to make soups and stews, appetizers, pastries, bread, Thai cooking,
holiday meals, barbecue, how to turn food into art. Class
sizes are limited to 15.

Inside culinary school

Before a class gets cooking, Caron lectures. During a recent class, students wearing chef hats and jackets listened as Caron talked about cooking seafood.

He asked them how to avoid making fried fish greasy. Students answered that the grease needs to be hot, otherwise the fish will become greasy. Correct, Caron said, adding that grease can’t be too old. “Grease has a breaking point. When it smokes, it’s too old.”

Caron told his students he wanted them to get away from fried fish and baked haddock. They were going to learn to make shrimp scampi, sauces from white wine and butter, baked stuffed lobster, sauteed muscles. And don’t be afraid, Caron lectured, to switch fish with different recipes.

Other lessons:

• Fish is cooked when it’s no longer shiny. Many people overcook fish.

• Cut the shrimp butterfly style so when served, it covers more plate. That allows restaurants to serve five shrimp instead of 10.

• When boiling five or more lobsters, remove rubber bands from the claws or you’ll get a rubbery taste.

• When cooking mussels, remove them as soon as they open, otherwise they’ll become rubbery.

After demonstrating how to make dishes, students were turned loose to create their own plates. “I want you to say, ‘What kind of dish can I create?'” Caron said.

The huge kitchen became a blur of activity as students spread out, grabbed pans and got to work.

One began a shrimp scampi dish. Another, a meal with mussels, scallops, tomatoes and spinach in a wine sauce. Still another sauteed shrimp, scallops, haddock, lobster, red peppers, spinach, cheese and roasted garlic.

The smell was so good it was enough to make a hungry grown woman cry.

‘No end to learning’ 

Sally Merritt of Auburn said she signed up for the class to learn new skills. “I could hold my own cooking meals, but I wanted to pick up some new meats and chicken,” she said. She was excited by what she had learned, she said.

Cindy Meoli of Portland said she wanted to take a class last year, but didn’t sign up quickly enough. Her sister did.

“She loved it,” Meoli said. “I was really jealous listening to her week after week.”

Meoli wanted to learn how to better prepare steaks and seafood, and save money.

“One thing he’s taught us is to cut the chicken up, to take the meat out and debone a bird. It’s much easier than I thought,” she said, and she gets more chicken for her money.

Students have learned to use food they’d normally throw out. “In a restaurant you use everything,” Merritt said.

Daniela Staton said she no longer has to buy buttermilk for scones or biscuits.

“He taught is how to make it,” she said. “It’s simple. One cup of whole milk; one teaspoon of white vinegar. You wait five minutes. That’s it.”

Regardless of how long a cook has been cooking, there’s always something to learn in the kitchen, Caron said.

“I’ve been cooking for 38 years and I still learn every day,” he said. “There’s no end of learning in this field.”

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A dish of mussels, scallops and bow-tie pasta in a beurre blanc sauce was created by Sally Merritt of Auburn at the adult education class at the Green Ladle in Lewiston.

Cindy Meloli tosses seafood in a beurre blanc sauce while taking an adult education cooking class at the Green Ladle in Lewiston. Meloli, of Portland, decided to take the class after someone she knew took it and loved it.

Sally Merritt of Auburn listens to Daniela Staton, right, of Lewiston as they prepare a seafood dish at the adult education class at the Green Ladle in Lewiston.

Chef Dan Caron shows his students the basics of preparing seafood in his adult education class at the Green Ladle in Lewiston.

Sally Merritt, right, places the finishing touches on her dish as Daniela Staton adds more butter to her creation during adult education classes at the Green Ladle in Lewiston.

Students laugh at a joke made by chef and teacher Dan Caron during an adult education class at the Green Ladle in Lewiston. Surrounded by people looking to further their careers as chefs, Cindy Meoli of Portland took the cooking class for fun.