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Cooking creatively
Chef brings demonstrations to your kitchen


By EMILY CAVALIER, Telegraph Staff
cavaliere@telegraph-nh.com

Published: Monday, Jun. 27, 2005

HOLLIS – Kristine Farhat is known for her theme parties. The stay-at-home mother of three has thrown piano bar parties, karaoke parties and the requisite dinner parties.

During the week, Farhat said she often goes to lunch with a group of other stay-at-home moms. When she found out about Liz Barbour and her business, The Creative Feast, there was no reason Farhat’s lunches with friends couldn’t be turned into a party, too.

Barbour, also of Hollis, provides a variety of culinary services, including catering, six-course chef’s tastings, and cooking classes at local venues. One of Barbour’s most popular services is her in-home cooking demonstration. Barbour brings recipes, ingredients and a mobile kitchen, and shows people how to prepare an entire menu.

Farhat hosted a cooking demo for a group of women this month at her home on Lund Lane.

“The people I invited don’t know each other. It gives me an opportunity to bring a variety of friends together,” Farhat said.

Although Farhat calls herself a stay-at-home mom, she and one of her lunch guests that day, Susan Wright of Nashua, have started their own interior design firm.

The other guests include Farhat’s sister, a friend from Massachusetts and a friend from Nashua.

At the end of the demo, the ladies raved.

Wright said, “I like that I’m not being pushed to buy anything.”

“We learned while we had our time together,” said Cathy Cardamone, of Nashua. “It was so much more fun than going out to a restaurant. This was really special.”

Of her guests, Farhat said, “They didn’t know each other, but there was never that lull in conversation. (The guests) don’t have to bring anything, they don’t have to do anything.”

Taking the pressure off

Farhat had a cookbook’s worth of reasons to host a demo, and many of those reasons were for her own good.

“I love to cook, but I’m not a great recipe-follower,” she said. “Having Liz come here, it takes so much pressure off.”

Before the guests arrive, Farhat put the finishing touches on orange, yellow and red place settings, while Barbour worked in the kitchen, cutting guava paste with dental floss to accompany a Manchego cheese appetizer.

When paired with the musky sweetness of guava paste, the dry, slightly sharp Spanish cheese will make quite a sophisticated combo.

Barbour explained that guava paste is readily available at ethnic grocery stores. She said she tries to create daring menus with ingredients that clients won’t have to go out of their way to locate.

“The less average the menu, the better,” Barbour said, as she slivered garlic cloves over just-sliced roasted peppers. “I’m taking the fear and mystery out of a really good meal.”

Farhat and her friends situated themselves in chairs in front of the kitchen island with glasses of alcohol-free sangria. Barbour explained the importance of having all of the ingredients ready and measured before starting to cook.

The menu for the day was a “tapas luncheon,” made up of appetizer-sized tastes of traditional Mediterranean dishes, including a Spanish potato omelet, garlic shrimp over baby spinach and an almond cake with orange sauce flambe.

Forget about the calories

With pens in hand, the wannabe chefs watched as Barbour used a mandoline, a vegetable-slicing tool, to cut potatoes for the omelet. It was the first time many of the women had seen someone use a mandoline, and they asked questions about where to buy one and how much it costs.

Barbour boiled the skinless potato slices in a cup’s worth of olive oil.

“You might think that this is going to have a lot of calories, and you know what?” Barbour said. “It does. But how often do you get to eat something like this?”

Barbour shared horror stories about frustrating times in professional kitchens while demonstrating basic knife skills – slicing onions and slivering garlic.

The guests wrote down Barbour’s handy tips – like using the bread knife to cut tomatoes – on the recipe folder Barbour handed out at the beginning of the demonstration.

Barbour, however, emphasized that cooking was not something to be followed verbatim, like a set of furniture-assembly instructions.

“If there is something that I am doing that doesn’t strike you as exciting, you should definitely change it,” she said.

The women held their breath, then cheered as Barbour flipped the potato omelet onto a plate and eased it back into the pan to finish cooking.

The women passed around a handful of herbs, bruising the flat-leaf parsley to release the aroma. They oohed and aahed over the flame-colored hue of ground saffron.

Between the demonstrations, the women sat at the colorfully appointed table as Barbour served the dishes. While the ladies chatted and tasted, Barbour prepared the next course.

For dessert, Barbour had made an almond cake ahead of time, but demonstrated for her captive audience how to make an orange sauce flambe. As she poured the orange liqueur into the pan, she turned up the gas stove and the sauce leapt up from the pan in a short, quick flame.

Not just for the ladies

Barbour’s business is growing in popularity, and she has some theories as to the reason behind it.

“I think people have nice homes that they want to share,” Barbour said. “Plus, I think people are tired of the same old way of entertaining.”

Demonstrations usually last between three and 3½ hours, although Farhat’s demonstration was somewhat shorter to allow the women to pick up their children from school.

Farhat is already thinking of ways she can work with Barbour in the future.

“I think it would be great to get the husbands together and take a grilling class,” she said.

Barbour, who is a mother of two herself, is thinking of ways to work with more busy women like Farhat. Barbour talked about offering “soccer mom meals,” cooking demonstrations that can be done in the 90 minutes between the time moms drop their kids off at the field and then pick them up.

Farhat learned from the demonstration herself, including the uses for different types of oils and adding garlic to a cold pan to keep it from burning.

“Seeing stuff being made, I feel so confident that I could do that,” Farhat said. “It’s not like a cookbook. The added bonus is – look – (Barbour) cleans up. It’s really hands-on, without getting my hands dirty.”

Emily Cavalier can be reached at 594-5833 or cavaliere@telegraph-nh.com.