Outside the Loop - Galveston - The Kitchen Chick Offers Great Cooking Classes and Stuff For Your Kitchen

I had the pleasure of partaking of a class with Mary Bass (Mary Bass) of Haak Winery in Santa Fe, Texas (Haak Winery - Check Out Their Events Calendar) focused on my favorite food topic, fried chicken (The Fried Chicken Blog)!


By timing my road trip to Galveston to avoid the rush hour, it was a pleasant afternoon drive with plenty of time to check out La King's Confectionary (La King's Candy Shop in Galveston). Ice cream, hard candies, chocolates. But for me, the coolest thing about the place is their retro/vintage salt water taffy making machine. I probably watched it turn out taffy for 30 minutes.

I was too late to go to Galveston's artisanal coffee roaster, Galveston Coffee Roasters (Galveston Coffee Roasters) but by missing out there, I came across this terrific little shop that features their coffee ( had an excellent Americano made by Corbin) and which has stocked their shelves with every imaginable board game to create this wonderful ambience for meet-ups with friends to play games. Their resident chef brought out some of her home made salsa for me to try and it was delicious.
(Board Game Island in Galveston)

That got me to around 6'ish, just in time for the class. On this particular day, the class was the Southern Fried Chicken Feast. In addition to a buttermilk batter fried chicken recipe, the menu included southern green beans, jalapeño hush puppies, a spoon bread casserole and buttermilk biscuits. Now, one of my guilty admissions is that, as good a cook as my friends consider me, I have never been successful with home made biscuits. Well, until now. Under Mary's guidance, I finally "got it" and now biscuits are no long a mystery to me. They turned out terrific. And yes, the secret is truly to not work them too much. But there were other tips and tricks that helped idiot proof the biscuit recipe. Wow. Great group of people (some new Facebook friends...always a bonus). Great venue. Fantastic cooking teacher. The class was the high point of my week. (http://www.thekitchenchick.com). I took a bunch of photos and videos cause I never want to forget what I learned.

Here follow, a sample of photos from the class.