The Quick Pig - oh, what a delicious, marvelous, magical animal

Last Friday, the boyfriend and I took a cooking class at ICE called "The Quick Pig". It was fun, although I was a little surprised that we just got right into cooking, without too much demonstration.

Dishes that we either made, or got to take part in eating.

• empanadas (where I proved that I am just as bad at assembling empanadas as I am at making wontons...but at least the 4th attempted looked ok); also, it wasn't salty enough, but I wasn't in charge of making the filling


• onion, potato, chorizo soup (too much effort, not enough payoff)


• "Shanghai" meetball...a modified version of Lion's Head meatball -- this version was actually surprisingly crunchy with rice sticks and waterchestnuts, which meant that it tasted more like my mom's steamed pork dish instead of the authentic thing. Not that I'm complaining, because I don't actually care for the original


• THE BEST DISH: pressed sandwich with guava paste, serrano ham, manchego cheese, arugula


• EASIEST TO MAKE: pork tenderloin wrapped with dijon mustard and prosciutto


• Mustard Greens with bacon and portobello mushrooms


• lemon bundt cake with poppyseeds (only thing that was non-pig)

It was fun and a congenial group. I think we both agreed that next time, we would try to work at separate tables so that we could get to try all the dishes. And, that to learn more techniques, a longer series of focused classes would be better.