By Isabell Macrina
Hometown Weekly Staff
This past week, Westwood Council on Aging hosted one of their classes favored by attendees, Cooking with Roberta: Let’s Do Brunch!
The class focuses on each part of the meal and puts them all together, and everyone gets to enjoy brunch afterwards!
Roberta and volunteer Julia brought out some of the ingredients prepared ahead of time, including the dough for the star of the show, pillowy pecan sticky buns! She showed everyone how to start the show but thanks to “TV magic” she had it prepped and ready to go, instead of us waiting the hour or overnight in the fridge proofing.
After rolling out the dough, Roberta prepped the filling with sugars and some chopped roasted pecans. She advised her attendees that roasting the pecans gives them a more well-rounded flavor, but they burn easily so keep an eye on them.
Roberta laid out on the rolled-out rectangle of dough, then rolled it up and cut it into rolls. She prepared the topping which, in this case, was placed on the bottom of the pan because you flip out the sticky buns when they’re done cooking.
With all the sugar and butter in this recipe, it is not a low-calorie treat, but Roberta said that shouldn’t be a discouragement.
“If you’re going to go for it, go all in!” she said.
After the buns went into the oven, Roberta started teaching us how to make her breakfast risotto with the perfect poached egg, and an orange and avocado salad with a ginger sesame dressing.
Her risotto is made with arborio rice, an Italian short-grain rice that is starchier than regular rice. She showed the class the way she handles cutting an onion; by keeping the root intact it keeps the onion from spreading all over the place.
The salad dressing she taught the class to make is a great way to add something special to a salad. Plus, her tip for poaching an egg — adding a bit of vinegar to the water to keep the egg together — gave a lot of patrons the courage to try it for themselves at home.
Classes like “Cooking with Roberta” are a great way to gather friends together and learn new skills or refresh some old ones. They’re popular too, with a full class this time and a waiting list. It’s no wonder, given that everything was delicious and filled the senior center with delicious aromas wafting from the kitchen, causing other patrons to poke their heads in to ask what was cooking.
Everyone left the class with a packet of recipes used during the class to try at home, maybe for their own brunch! If you have the chance to sign up for these events, don’t miss out on it, especially if it’s a cooking class with Roberta.
