We did wind up with a few salty, watery rejects and several merely average dinners. (Perhaps polenta lasagna just wasn't meant to be frozen? And the sweet-and-sour turkey meatballs wouldn't have been out of place in a school cafeteria.)

But of the 18 different items we tasted, six were winners of the sort you wouldn't mind serving to company (which is exactly what I did with the flaky, cheesy, artichoke phyllo puffs). There are restaurants in town that would be happy to feature the lemon grilled chicken with tangy blueberry chutney and buttery citrus orzo. And it's a crime that Nestle's slice-and-bake cookie dough even exists in the same universe as the decadent package of Cuizam!'s chocolate chunk cookies.

In practice, that doesn't much matter -- although it didn't seem fair that, for instance, the salmon I took home was beautifully crimped in parchment paper by some unknown hand, while my own attempts threatened to unravel. The staff does strive for consistency, though, and repairs anything that diverges too far from the standard.

The strangers we cooked with quickly felt like friends as we measured and chopped and learned new kitchen skills together. It's not surprising that businesses are starting to use such courses as team-building exercises.

The duds-to-raves ratio would be even better on subsequent visits, I think, after getting some sense of what to order and how to cook it (a few Cuizam! menu items are permanent, about half of the rest turns over each month).

Overall, we found seafood dishes were good, as were dishes with pastry crusts, such as empanadas. Our biggest problem came with meats that required microwaving, possibly because the directions included a lot of wiggle room. We ruined one nice-looking flank steak by nuking it into grayness -- next time we'll throw it on the grill (which would be fine, says Cuizam! owner Katherine Kehrli -- the cooking directions on each package usually default to microwaving because that's the fastest option).

Also, the food still requires a modicum of planning, as most of the entrees had to be defrosted overnight before cooking.

How it works

The three-hour "cook and carry" sessions began with a tour of the commercial kitchen led by Kehrli, a businesswoman who parlayed her interest in food into a career in 2002. Recipes were developed with the help of professional food diva Kathy Casey, and a staff of pros who oversee the customer-amateurs.

The professional staff are licensed as food handlers, but the customers are not (and don't have to be, says the King County Health Department). For the squeamish, it's good to know that county records show the business received a flawless score at its last inspection.

The tour includes basic health requirements (wash your hands, pull back long hair), and instructions on how to weigh spices on a professional scale and use other equipment less familiar to the home cook. Be aware: This is a real commercial kitchen; the knives are freshly sharpened, grills and ovens are hotter than the home cook might expect, and you'll need non-skid shoes.

Over the session, one hour might be spent walking between the walk-in-refrigerator and the counters to assemble ingredients for a monster pan of macaroni and cheese; the next might be stir-frying vegetables on a table-size grill, and the next getting a quick lesson on how to work with phyllo dough.

Some tasks aren't done by the customers -- not because they're difficult, Kehrli said, but because of the tedium. It's fun to make the five-spice sauce with star anise, for instance, and it's instructive to learn how to skewer chicken satays, but there's not much to be gained from chopping 40 pounds of chicken into 1.5-inch chunks.

Rob Mullins, the sharp Culinary Institute of America graduate who patrolled our workspace, caught our errors before they became fatal (such as when we measured our ingredients in regular ounces, rather than the fluid ounces the recipe called for). While the class is more about hands-on work than teaching, Mullins and other staffers cheerfully welcomed questions, patiently bore with our snail-like pace and showed us how to improve our negligible dicing skills and even stir flour into an acceptable roux.

An advantage to taking the course, as opposed to just buying the food from the take-out shelf (another option) is getting to see precisely what goes into the recipes. We appreciated seeing that the tomato sauce was made from scratch instead of a can and that the staff told us to toss the slightly watery chopped onions from the refrigerator storage and prepare several fresh pounds instead.

Kehrli said the business tries not to dumbdown recipes despite all the amateur help. And they're trying to develop dishes that lend themselves to all parts of the take-home experience: Cooking, freezing, thawing and reheating.

They tried a kebab once, with coconut chicken, green and red bell peppers and onions.

"It really looked great, but those peppers and onions, without being chopped up as part of a sauce or casserole or something, they just didn't survive the thawing and grilling process. They got squishy and wimped out on us," Kehrli said. "We recognize we can't do everything, and really work to make sure that all the recipes we use work well."

Want to try making a Cuizam! dish at home? Here's a recipe:

CUIZAM! LEMONGRASS MARINATED HALIBUT WITH GINGER SOBA NOODLES & SPICY PEACH SALSA
SERVES EIGHT

• 1 cup fresh lemongrass, sliced 1/8"
• 1/2 teaspoon red crushed pepper
• 1 tablespoon fresh minced ginger
• 1/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 gloves of garlic, minced
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 8 6-ounce blade cut halibut fillets

GINGER SOY GLAZED SOBA NOODLES

• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup sake rice wine
• 3 tablespoons rice vinegar, unseasoned
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons fresh, minced ginger
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 3 tablespoons water
• 3 pounds of fresh soba noodles
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil

SPICY PEACH SALSA

• 1/2 cup Rose's Lime Marmalade
• 1/4 cup diced red onion
• 2 teaspoons fresh, minced ginger
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
• 2 1/2 teaspoons Mae Ploy Sweet Chilli Sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup sliced or chunked fresh peaches
• 2 tablespoons thinly sliced green onion

COOKING AHEAD

Prices, menus and policies vary widely at local businesses where customers cook a few hours per month and bring home a supply of meals. Local businesses include: