Color, Fire & Flavor
At Cook’s Culinary Collective, this class is about building the kind of meal that feels like a feast — generous, colorful, and built on vegetables, beans, and grains.
In Color, Fire & Flavor: A Global Vegetable Feast, we’ll cook with seasonal, thoughtfully sourced produce, pantry legumes, and a small but hard-working global pantry. Think fragrant spices, chili pastes, citrus, herbs, and layered aromatics that bring depth and character to every dish. We’ll roast, char, braise, and simmer our way through a set of dishes designed to be shared at the table, then revisited and reinvented as next-day bowls, toasts, and easy dinners.
You’ll leave with a handful of anchor recipes, a fresher way of looking at your spice and grain shelf, and a clear sense of how to build deeply flavored, vegetable-forward meals that feel celebratory any night of the week.
Price: $155 per person plus tax
all ingredients included
Class Overview
This hands-on, sensory workshop is built around three ideas: seasonality, sustainability, and flavor.
We’ll start at the flavor table: whole spices, blends, pastes, infused oils, vinegars, citrus, and herbs. You’ll learn how to wake them up — toasting and blooming them so the aroma actually shows up on the plate.
From there, we’ll build a small set of versatile dishes: high-heat roasted and charred vegetables, braised greens and beans, a fragrant grain, and a couple of sauces and crunchy toppings that can be mixed and matched through the week.
The menu shifts with the market, but the patterns stay the same. You’ll walk away with a framework you can repeat at home using whatever is in season and close to home.
What You'll Learn
• Cook with seasonal produce and make small, sustainable choices in the kitchen.
• Build a practical global flavor pantry without a shelf of one-off ingredients.
• Toast and bloom spices so they taste vivid instead of flat or dusty.
• Use aromatics — garlic, onion, ginger, scallions, chiles — as a confident base layer.
• Lean on beans, lentils, and whole grains as anchors for plates that feel full and satisfying.
• Pair vegetables, legumes, and grains with the right balance of salt, acid, spice, and texture so dishes feel complete.
• Turn a pan of roasted vegetables or a pot of beans into a couple of different suppers and lunches with sauces, sprinkles, and drizzles.
• Season more by taste and instinct, not just by following a recipe.
On The Menu
Menu will shift with the season and market availability, but may include a mix of vegetables, beans, and grains such as:
Warm Spice-Roasted Carrots with Orange, Yogurt & Dukkah
Carrots roasted with coriander, cumin, and smoked paprika, served over citrus-kissed yogurt or tahini and finished with a toasted nut-and-seed mix.
Charred Cabbage with Miso-Chili Glaze, Sesame & Scallions
Thick wedges of cabbage roasted until caramelized, brushed with a savory-spicy glaze, and finished with sesame oil, scallions, and lime.
Harissa Cauliflower & Chickpeas with Herby Green Sauce
Sheet-pan cauliflower and chickpeas in a garlicky harissa marinade, brightened with lemon and a loose herb sauce for contrast.
Coconut-Turmeric Braised Greens & Beans
Greens and beans simmered in a silky coconut broth scented with ginger, garlic, turmeric, and chile, finished with lime and fresh herbs.
House Spice Sprinkle & Finishing Oil
A custom crunchy mix and simple infused oil each student blends to take home and use on vegetables, soups, grains, and more.
Fragrant Grain Pilaf
Farro, freekeh, bulgur, or quinoa cooked with aromatics, warm spices, herbs, and a touch of citrus — a generous base for building hearty bowls.
Who This Class Is For
• Home cooks who want vegetable-forward, bean- and grain-based cooking to feel abundant, not restrictive.
• Anyone curious about global flavors and how to use spices with more confidence.
• Cooks looking to make more sustainable choices without giving up pleasure at the table.
• Intermediate beginners and up; comfort with basic knife skills is helpful but not required.
Take Aways
• A reliable framework for plant-centered dinners built on vegetables, beans, and grains: anchor veg + flavor base + sauce + crunch + acid.
• A short, realistic spice and flavor list that earns its space in the pantry.
• Anchor recipes and flexible templates that can easily go vegetarian or vegan and adapt with the seasons.
• More confidence to cook by feel, flavor, and curiosity.
Class Details
Format: Hands-on, small-group workshop
Length: ~2.5 hours
Location: [Kitchen / Studio Name, Neighborhood]
Skill Level: Curious home cooks; comfortable beginners to seasoned home chefs
Includes: Tasting throughout, shared meal at the end, printed recipes and flavor templates
Cook’s Culinary Collective is a come-to-you experience: I handle the shopping, we cook together in your home, and you enjoy a great night with your guests. When we’re finished, I head out and you get to stay put, happy, and already home.
Class Size: Intentionally small so we can cook, taste, and adjust together as the pan tells the truth.
Group Size: Minimum 2, maximum 12 in most home kitchens. Larger groups may require an event space.