One of the great adventures we had during our impossibly short trip to Barcelona was a private cooking class. I had never taken a cooking class abroad before, but my sister and I both spent several months of COVID lockdown scrolling through Bon Appetit magazine and the NYT Cooking app and loved making paella and other involved dishes. We wanted to try our hand at cooking with some experts in Catalonia!
We booked our cooking class with Barcelona Cooking, a cooking class run out of a spacious private kitchen on La Rambla, one of the main streets in Barcelona. They source their fresh ingredients from the nearby world-famous La Boqueria market and offer tours of the market as well as private cooking classes. The team at Barcelona Cooking was very responsive to my inquiries about food allergies, and the chef teaching us was so accommodating that he actually changed all the recipes to be completely allergy-friendly! We were joined by an eager and friendly family visiting from Scandinavia and their very well-behaved children made the class fun and relaxed for all of us.
We cooked several amazing dishes that were quite simple and quite delicious. Because I put my phone away for cooking, I unfortunately do not have many great pictures to share but the Barcelona Cooking website has beautiful pictures of their food along with recipes! For starters we made pa amb tomàquet, which involved scraping toast with garlic and very fresh tomatoes. It was a bit like garlic bread, but the tomatoes added a juicy tartness to the toast, creating a combination of texture as well as flavor that was a great start to the meal.
The first dish we cooked as a team was crema de calabaza, a butternut squash and pear cream bisque. My sister loves to make a silky butternut squash soup and often makes a carrot and ginger version throughout the fall season. With the addition of some sauteed onion, the butternut squash and fresh pears blended together into a rich creamy soup that was naturally dairy-free! We garnished our dishes with toasted hazelnuts and a drizzle of olive oil, and while others topped theirs off with Gorgonzola cheese, mine was adorned with tiny salty sea asparagus!
Our next dish to prepare was the famous tortilla Española—not the flat corn pancake that we think of in America, but the eggy, rich omelette filled with decadent slices of potatoes. Imagine your hashbrowns cooked right into your omelette! I’ve seen fancy restaurants use duck fat to fry the potatoes or add truffles along with the onions. This dish was easily one of our favorite foods that we ate along the whole trip. My sister had the honor of flipping the tortilla onto the plate hot from the skillet and wow! What finesse!
The main course was a Valencian style paella. When my sister and I have made paella at home, we have always made a seafood version, but this version utilized chicken or sometimes other meat instead. For home cooks who are not so patient or perhaps are not able to be as to-the-minute vigilant about cooking seafood, chicken thighs might be a more manageable option because dark meat is quite forgiving when overcooked. This version also had plenty of vegetables, which is a great way to use up leftover fall produce and add a rich and full flavor to this famous saffron-infused dish. We cooked it in a giant wok which was very cool and it was so delicious that we accidentally ate the whole thing without taking any pictures—even when we ate up all the leftovers the next day!
For dessert we made Catalan cream which was somewhat like a crème brulee or a flan. The cream is typically made with milk mixed with eggs and sugar, set aflame with one of those cool torches. This dish can easily be made with soy milk or coconut milk instead, and has a very smooth sweet texture. As someone who did not grow up eating pudding, cheesecake, flan, or other foods with a soft texture, I always find the texture to be somewhat off-putting at first especially when combined with impossible sweetness, however the crackled sugar topping probably adds a crunchy juxtaposition. I would probably make this dish on very rare occasions to impress guests but it is not necessarily something I would whip up at home for myself.
We enjoyed our meal with wine and our host shared some of his favorite cooking stories while the family that joined us in the class with us entertained us with stories of their international travels. We couldn’t quite finish all the food but our host was so sweet to give us the leftover paella wrapped in foil so we could enjoy it a second day. He also gave us some recommendations for new restaurants opening up in Barcelona that we added to our itinerary. We went home full and ready for our next adventure.
Given that we only spent a few short days in Barcelona, we wanted to experience as much as we could. We had a wonderful time at the Barcelona Cooking studio and hope that we can someday return to take more classes and eat more amazing food. For now, stay tuned for more of our adventures in Barcelona!
Brunch with Bear 
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