In Moses Ceaser’s home, there can’t be too many cooks in the kitchen.

Moses hosts a weekly event in his west Berkeley warehouse to build community over the cutting board. For 10 bucks or less, you can enjoy a night out with old friends, make a few new ones and learn about cuisines or techniques that might have seemed intimidating to try alone. The food is always vegetarian, sometimes vegan and there's a good chance you'll head home with leftovers. Welcome to Frugal Foodies.

Moses said he started the event to help people on a budget get comfortable cooking on their own, rather than relying on expensive restaurants to provide creative fare.

"I never want Frugal Foodies to cost more than $10," he said. "I know that, even at the current price, it's not accessible to everyone. But I think it's an amazing value to have four to six courses for this price, and I'd like for people to leave feeling like they not only had a great experience, but got a great deal."

Most nights, Moses, 42, chooses the menu. But once a month a guest chef curates the event. Roxanne Andersen, 40, of Oakland, arranged a recent session around international finger foods. Her menu included fresh Vietnamese salad rolls, fried vegetable pakoras with mint chutney, Mexican sopes and, for dessert, quince-apple turnovers. All from scratch, all to be completed by about 15 people in less than two hours.

“It was like Hell’s Kitchen,” said Kathleen Dargis, 47, of Oakland. “I don’t know these people, I don't know this kitchen. Someone was shouting at me. We were all just winging it.”

Moses' home used to be a margarine packing plant for a Heinz subsidiary. Framed color photographs from his travels line the brightly painted walls, warming the brick and concrete interior. Stepping inside, you leave your shoes by the door.

Moses greets each guest and points them toward a seating area to study the laminated double-sided sheet outlining his rules.

No measuring cups. No electric appliances. Use the bathroom sink along with the kitchen sink to wash veggies and dishes. And whatever you do, at the end of the night, do not put anything away.

Moses said he started the event, after being inspired by a similar group in Montreal, when he left his job as a nonprofit director and “wanted to have a time in my week when I was coordinating something for others to fill a bit of the void.”

"It’s been about promoting community, connecting with interesting people, expanding my own culinary horizons," he said. "But my main motivation right now is that it forces me to clean up my house once a week, and that's a really good thing.”

The night Roxanne planned the meal, everyone settled down by about 6:45 p.m. and joined in a quick round of introductions. Attendees included a father with his pre-teen daughter, several international guests, a couple hipsters and a slew of 20- or 30-somethings. There were dates to munch on, along with humus and hot bread straight from the oven. Roxanne described the night’s menu and participants raised their hands to choose dishes.

“Don’t forget – you can’t cook with someone you came with,” Moses said before divvying up groups. “Roxanne, as is the case with all Frugal Foodies chefs, is not allowed to touch any food. It’s your job to screw up her recipes as you like, or your responsibility to ask her for help.”

Groups took a few minutes to figure out each person’s task. Then the mad dash began. There was a rush to grab work space on the large dining table, which was covered with slabs of plastic that created a huge cutting board. People grabbed bowls and knives and got to grating, chopping and washing. All the fresh ingredients, bought that day by Moses, were heaped in a lovely pile in the kitchen: quinces and onions, bunches of parsley and purple basil, lettuce and limes, red peppers and mangoes. It was all there, almost too beautiful to disturb.

The smell of hot oil filled the air almost immediately as Guri Singh, 38, of Hayward, started to fry sopes on a griddle. Several women made dough for the turnovers, and sliced the apples and quinces to fold inside. Another group chopped vegetables for the salad rolls, covering the table with green herbs, purple cabbage and yellow strips of juicy mango.

Participants tossed food scraps into catch-all bowls on the table, emptying the bowls into larger compost bins in the kitchen as they filled up. Moses made the rounds, pointing people toward ingredients or utensils. Mostly he and Roxanne hung back, letting the cooks work at their own pace. In the background Moses played “music with a beat,” an eclectic mix of reggae, classic rock  and dance music. And, I must admit, stripping the leaves off parsley is a lot more fun when listening to “Centerfold” and “Hips Don’t Lie.”

Dirty dishes piled in the kitchen as the room filled with competing smells. One group set up a deep frying station on a satellite table. They dipped battered vegetables, bananas and spinach into sizzling oil and set them on a plate covered with towels to soak up grease.

The clock kept ticking and the room heated up. The spring roll group dunked rigid rounds of rice paper into warm water to soften the skins before stuffing them. Vegetables popped from the deep fryer, crisp and golden. There were dozens of sopes to fill with beans, cheese and avocado. In the living room, an assembly line formed as the dessert team spooned an apple-and-quince mixture into turnover pastry dough pockets, folded them and sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar.

As the 8:30 p.m. deadline loomed, Moses morphed into a kind of coach trying to get a last sprint from his athletes. By the end of the next song, “Can't Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe,” the food had to be on the table ready to eat, he said. A table that was, by the way, strewn with scraps and cutting boards, dirty knives, prep supplies and bits of food that hadn't quite made it onto serving platters.

“Folks,” Moses says, “Barry White will not be singing that much longer.”

The last few minutes were a blur as we pushed dirty dishes out of sight into the kitchen; wiped down and set aside the plastic food prep slabs; vacuumed; covered the table with a festive cloth; and set out the dishes to share.

Moses summoned everyone around the table to go over each dish. Then we piled tapas onto our plates, jamming into the living room to eat. Everyone laughed and talked -- and not just with the people they came with. Meal highlights included the deep-fried banana pakoras with mint chutney and the apple-quince turnovers, served steaming hot with just the right bit of tartness from the quince.

After eating, we went around the circle once more to share thoughts about the night. A French woman named Virginie said she liked learning cooking words, like “sift.” Roxanne, the guest chef, said it was inspiring to see people try unfamiliar foods and techniques, such as deep frying and dough making.

“It’s chaotic. But there's a really cooperative vibe going," said Gerard Garbutt, 56, of Kensington. "It's not so much about the result, but how you get the result that’s interesting and exciting.”

Find all the recipes in this story in Oakland Local's blog. See upcoming Frugal Foodies events here. Residents of San Jose and Seattle also can attend Frugal Foodies in those cities. Visit www.frugalfoodies.com for more information.