I was sailing on the Carnival Jubilee, Carnival Cruise Line’s newest Excel-class ship, which is homeporting out of Galveston, Texas.
This was my first traditional Carnival experience, and it was full of firsts: my first visit to Shaquille O’Neal’s Big Chicken restaurant, my first ride on the Bolt roller coaster, my first time in the fishbowl-like hot tub in the Loft 19 retreat area.
It was also my first class in the Carnival Kitchen, the line’s cooking school that offers instruction in creating dishes including pasta, sushi, barbecue and treats like ice cream, cupcakes and pies. There are also classes devoted to Italian, Spanish, Indian, Colombian and Peruvian cuisines.
The Carnival Kitchen experience debuted on the Carnival Panorama and is available on the Carnival Mardi Gras, Celebration and now the Jubilee. Classes range from $45 to $65.
Emeril 101
My guest and I took the Emeril’s Favorites class, which included several recipes from Lagasse, the 1991 James Beard Award winner and TV personality known for his Creole cuisine and irrepressible personality. Lagasse became Carnival’s chief culinary officer in late 2022 and has a restaurant on each of Carnival’s Excel-class ships. His relationship with the brand includes giving his recipes to the cooking class we had signed up for.
Lagasse wasn’t on this sailing, but my guest and I spotted him outside his onboard restaurant, Emeril’s Bistro 717, on the day of the Jubilee’s naming ceremony prior to the sailing. My guest was giddy when he spotted Lagasse and quickly snapped a photo of him and sent it to a friend of his who is a chef and restaurateur.
We made three dishes in the 90-minute course. The first was shrimp and okra gumbo with file powder, which is made from the leaves of the sassafras tree. The second dish, called New New Orleans pasta, included chicken, shrimp and chorizo. The third was strawberries Romanoff.
Being a full class, every station in the room had to be used for the course. My guest and I ended up at the Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant cooking station, which has a lower counter than the others and was just right for my 5-foot-4 frame; my 6-foot-tall guest said the lower counter didn’t bother him at all.
All of our ingredients were in bowls that were placed in front of us and grouped for each course. My guest is a pescetarian, so our chef, Joydeep, took the time to walk us through our dietary adjustment. The chicken and sausage called for in our pasta dish were replaced with more shrimp, a swap I was more than happy with.
Wearing a microphone like he was a performer on a stage, Joydeep began to instruct us on how to prepare our dishes. We began with the gumbo, sauteing the okra and then adding other vegetables before stirring in spices and the lobster broth.
We then pivoted to the pasta, where I learned not only to add salt to water when making pasta but to go heavy on the salt; we were instructed to add a whole spoonful of it. I later could taste the difference in how flavorful the pasta was and resolved to incorporate more salt into my pasta cooking at home.
We also learned how to tell if our fettuccine was al dente by taking out a piece from the boiling water and breaking it in half — which is easier said than done — to find the tiniest bit of white color in the center of the pasta.
Sweet spot
The final dish was dessert; Joydeep and Carnival did the heavy lifting on that one. The strawberries were halved and marinated in sugar, Grand Marnier and lemon zest for at least four hours before we laid eyes on them. As we tended to our gumbo and pasta, Joydeep made a whipped cream using heavy whipping cream and sugar. Once loaded into piping bags, we used it to decorate our strawberry plates.
My guest did as he was told, dotting beautiful dollops of whipped cream while I played around, drawing a flower design around my strawberries — which may have resulted in me eating a bit more whipped cream than I would have if I’d simply made just a few dots.
The class wasn’t so fast-paced that I felt like I was competing in a cooking show, but Joydeep was quick enough that we missed a few steps. For instance, we added spices to the gumbo too early and the diced tomatoes later than we should have. But in the end nothing tasted off about our creation.
“This is my kind of cooking. The prep work is already done, and I don’t have to do the dishes,” my guest, a stay-at-home dad, told me.
Once everything was cooked, we plated our dishes and took them to long tables nearby. The gumbo and the pasta dish both had a bit of a kick to them, creating a memorable flavor that I appreciated. The gumbo was delicious despite our timing mistakes. And the dessert was right on the nose, with just enough sugar to power me through to my next activity.
Before leaving, Joydeep presented me and each of my classmates with a graduation gift: a red Carnival Kitchen-branded spatula. A parting video from Lagasse told us we would be given a copy of the recipes we had just made; I received mine in an email later the same day.
After leaving the class, I daydreamed about growing my own okra and making this meal again.
