First Class Cooking

11/04/2025

🎄It’s high time for Holiday plans! 🍾

Gather your friends, your team, your family for a delicious, delightful, educational and most of all fun! culinary experience. ✨

Our Private Events are completely bespoke with customization around the menu, the start and run time, format and more. We are able to accommodate dietary concerns and offer customized favors, cocktails, catering and just about anything you can think of. 🎁

With more than 20 years experience teaching in the Bay Area we have shared our passion for food and cooking with thousands and thousands of chefs and know how to excite, engage and inspire chefs from all experience and interest-levels. 👩‍🍳

Our recipes feature the best-quality products of the Bay Area and are developed to elevate everyday cooking, while remaining direct enough to be recreated again. Sharing a true understanding for culinary and kitchen science grounds our approach 🤓

Want to learn more?! Send us a DM for rates, details, availability and sample menus. 🗓️

We’d love to help you ring in this holiday season! ⚡️

03/25/2025

What a sacrifice!

Did you know that the process for filleting fish and skinning mangos is actually the same? 🔪🐟🥭
The technique is called The Sacrifice and calls for cutting away a small portion of the good stuff (hence “the sacrifice”) so that you can keep your thumb holding the skin against the board and utilize ~tension~ to cut the fish or fruit, cleanly and swiftly away from the skin.

This was such a great menu to greet the first warm days of Spring!
Mahi Mahi Ceviche and Avocado-Mango Salsa (plus a vegetarian Brazilian Feiojoada and Passionfruit-Coconut Cupcakes).

A meal that matched on palate and also allowed for a through line of technique, making the lessons more lasting.
We teach cooking for real life: Fantastic menus, showcasing the best ingredients of the Bay Area in recipes you can (and will want!) to make again. Instruction is hands-on so that you can truly experience and understand the process.

We’re making the seasonal shift to Spring foods! Join us to work with asparagus, radish, herbs aplenty, strawberries and more!

Current class listings are linked in bio 👩‍🍳
Reach out with any questions!

12/22/2024

Ooh boy! What a December! (What a year- )

We’ve wrapped with classes for 2024 but our elves are still at work, creating Gift Certificates to join a hands on Cooking Class in 2025

Last mail drop for hard copy certificates is Monday morning 12/23 and pdf certificates can be prepared and delivered up to (and beyond) Christmas Day.

Link to purchase is in profile 🎁

We absolutely love to share our passion and knowledge for cooking and all things food with our ingredient-driven, seasonal recipes that will elevate and inspire everything you do in the kitchen.

We are often able to accommodate vegetarian, gluten free and other dietary concerns - please inquire

Every month we publish a class calendar filled with creative, nutritious, elegant menus. Our recipes are developed to be direct enough to be prepared again while sharing technique and inspiration to level-up what you cook every day ⚡️

Reach out with any questions - we’re here to help!
Gift Certificates, Recipe questions, holiday meal planning, recommendations for favorite ingredients, culinary gifts and where to find them.

Wishing you a wonderful finish to 2024!

chef
guide

12/05/2024

✨Ooh boy! If it’s not the season of fun-to-eat, fun-to-make Festive & Beautiful Foods. 🥂
iPhoto Update + Instagram Update have me kinda losing my mind so check out the upcoming offerings (linked in profile) to see what we’re preparing this month.
Lots of bold flavors inflected with the zesty zing of Winter produce 💫. Can’t make it this month? Buy a gift certificate and the recipient can use it anytime in 2025! 🎁

09/27/2024

We’ve crossed into Comfort Cooking season.
Still creating approaches that favor warm temps but our proc

09/12/2024

08/16/2024

🍅 It’s Tomato Time !!🌶️

Late Summer (how’d that happen?!) and we are awash in tomatoes, pepper, eggplants plus all the deep sweetness of plums, nectarines, figs and early season grapes 💥

Tri Tip w Charred Pepper & Tomato Chimichurri is _the dish of the month: we made it twice this week, it’s on the schedule for next week and pops up in a public class Sept 1 (in a menu curated to show off the best foods of California- a perfect showcase for Labor Day visitors 😉).

Our consistent crowd-favorite Tomato Tart is on the menu this Saturday - don’t miss it! and tomatoes wear the hats of
🇮🇹 Panzanella 8/18
🇫🇷Tomatoes Provençal 8/20
🇱🇧 Fattoush 8/22
later this week- all delicious & dazzling ✨

The Spirit of Summer is in all of our menus this month: big, bold flavors presented with a loose ex*****on that savors the waning late, longer days.
You can feel the sun on the plate!

Join us to build your cooking and knife skills, explore a new cuisine, enjoy a delicious meal in downtown San Francisco and meet great people!

02/05/2024

💕 Valentine’s Day is one of our favorite events all year!

It annually attracts a great! (Kind, Generous, FUN) group of people (and not just couples!)

🧑‍🍳we collectively prepare a rouge-hued meal: learning new skills, refining cooking techniques while laughing, sipping and getting answers to all of your culinary why’s

🍽️ Meal complete, we all dine together with more smiles, good eats & good times in an all-around celebration of love! ❤️

🎟️Tickets are going fast - RSVP in the link

Valentine’s Day Cooking Class 2024
1) Negroni Sbagliato (+ non-alc option)
2) Mixed Chicory & Blood Orange Salad
3) Saffron Potatoes w Pink Peppercorns
4) Crisp-skinned Salmon w Red & White Vegetable galette & mustard seed “caviar”
5) Champagne Chocolate Truffles
+take-away treat!

The menu is and a adaptation is possible- please request when booking

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12/18/2023

Just a sample of what we’ll be cooking next month…
There’s still time to order & receive Cooking Class Gift Certificates in time for Christmas!

Gift Certificates are personalized and may be redeemed in any class, one year from purchase

They can be delivered as hard copies through the mail or emailed as pdfs

Our hyper-seasonal menus change monthly and cover a wide range of culinary techniques, cooking themes and can accommodate vegetarian, gluten free, dairy free diets and more.

Our recipes are delicious, inspired and approachable.

Our mission is to make everyone a better home chef and our instruction goes beyond just leading the steps of a recipe to deeply explain the hows & whys of cooking, how to use parts that would commonly be discarded, and how to adjust recipes across seasons, party size and desired complexity.

We offer Public Cooking Classes and host Private Parties, Catered Dinners, Launch Events and more.

Get in touch! We’d love to cook with you in the new year!

Located in South of Market, San Francisco, right near the Caltrain station 94107

10/13/2023

🍁It’s finally feeling like Fall

We’ve delighted in recent weeks to see peaches sold side by side with pomegranates and persimmons but as we settle into October, upcoming menus are full on Fall 🍂

Don’t miss the latest class offerings, linked in profile

We’re pulling from the full spectrum of Autumn foods- familiar stalwarts apples and squash of course, but we have dazzling (and doable!) recipes featuring pears, cabbage, radicchio, Brussels and wild mushrooms that I cannot wait to share with you.

These recipes are perfect for cozy nights at home with strategies to streamline weeknight meals (and WFH lunches) and ideas for how to add flair to items fit for the holiday table.

Please get in touch if I can answer your cooking questions, seek ingredient advice or have substitution questions- we’re excited to get you excited and confident in the kitchen! 🥘

First Class Cooking offers seasonal, ingredient-driven, hands-on cooking classes in San Francisco

08/14/2023

When I craft menus for these late Summer months, I want the sun that grew the foods to be felt on the plate

There’s an ease and a glee with each bite,
an informality - let that juice drip - and a
flourish of flexibility - sure! mix in more varieties, add more herbs, invite more people

It’s the time for big meals, enjoyed in long spells with a bunch of friends 💞
- more, more, more!

Check out the full August Class schedule (linked in profile) - there were some tough edits to pare it down to one last go! for Sunny Day favorites

What’s on deck?
🍅Lots of tomatoes, LOTS of tomatoes 😉
💜regal figs, local grapes & radicchio
🥒an array of refreshing cucumber varieties
🌱simple & effective herb oil
🎣responsibly sourced local seafood
… and just a tease of satisfying recipes for the colder months to come

Whether you’re looking to cook better at home, save money, eat better or simply learn & socialize in a comfortable environment our hands on cooking classes will elevate your home cooking and help you love the process 👍

What are you most looking to cook before Summer wraps?

05/22/2023

t’s a holiday weekend! 🍉
The unofficial kick-off to summer! ⛱️

(yikes! 2023 is zipping by 💨)

Whether you’re planning a staycation or visiting SF, we have wonderful classes this week, showing off and celebrating the best foods of the Bay Area and the first tastes of Summer!

5/24 Elevated Everyday 🍓
1) Crisp Caesar Salad
2) Grilled Asparagus w Lemon Aïoli
3) Pistachio Crusted Ling Cod w Garlicky Spinach
4) Strawberry Shortcakes

5/25 California Cool (V, GF) 🥑
1) Freshly squeezed Margaritas
2) Avocado- Mango Salsa
3) Charred Poblano & Roast Sweet Potato w Cotija Cheese
4) Grilled Fish Tacos w Shaved Cabbage & Bell Pepper Vinaigrette
5) Homemade Churros w Chocolate

5/27 Signature San Francisco (V) 🍅
1) Early Summer Bruschettas
2) Stuffed Zucchini
3) Zuni Roast Chicken over Quinoa w Piastchio, Parsley & Sultanas
4) Summer Fruit Galettes

5/28 Easy Eating for Sunny Days (V) 🍃
1) Arugula & Stone Fruit Salad
2) Spinach Feta Phyllo Pie
3) Tuna Niçoise w Potatoes, Green Beans, Eggs & Olives
4) Strawberry & Pink Pepper Shortbread

Register at the link in profile or send us a DM and we’ll share the checkout link How are you celebrating the long weekend?

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