Friday, April 22, 2011

Getting Schooled

This week, thanks to the quick thinking and generosity of my dear friend, Marty (and a coupon from LivingSocial), I took a cooking class. It was a fun chance to spend some time with Marty and, perhaps, learn a new skill or two.

The class was Italian Home Cooking at Dish It Up, a housewares store with a beautiful teaching kitchen as a focal point. Adjacent to the retail space there is a design shop where you can get help designing your dream kitchen.

They have Viking appliances and cookware, Shun knives…it’s a great place to cook!

The set up of the class is part demo, part hands on. The chef/instructor, the entertaining and skilled Karen Binkhorst, did some demonstration, talked us through some basic knife skills, then had volunteers come up and help with the prep and cooking.

The first order of the evening was to make pasta dough.

We each got an egg and some flour and went to town. It was fascinating…it had been probably nearly twenty years since I’d made fresh pasta. But Chef Karen kept talking about the alchemy of making pasta as we kneaded our dough. The magic moment when you feel the dough turn from rough to silky. Where it has just the right amount of flour, enough so that it doesn’t stick to your hands or the counter anymore, but is not dry, and the action of pushing and turning and folding creates this beautiful, golden, tenderly resilient piece of wonder. And it did.

I am used to bread dough, which you never work to that point. But I could tell the moment my dough started to change. It was indeed a revelation.

Once we were all done with that bit of excitement, we got straight to the appetizers so we could eat something before it got too late.

The antipasti course included roasted eggplant stuffed with herbed goat cheese, fried cauliflower with pine nuts, golden raisins and chile flake, and roasted peppers with olives and capers.

It was fun watching some of the other students who were less familiar with chopping and slicing. Two gals worked on the goat cheese filling for the eggplant, one of them getting busted for licking her fingers after working the herbs into the cheese by hand. To her credit, she did not put her fingers back into the cheese after she licked them.

They both were tentative at first when chopping herbs, but quickly built confidence and did a great job with the chopping and mincing. They looked so excited, like a whole new world was opening up to them.

I got to help strip the roasted peppers of their charred skin, then chop them and put them into a bowl. Chef Karen told a story about her only attempt at roasting peppers on an electric burner (quickest method to roast a pepper is to turn your gas burner on high and put the pepper right on the flame, letting it get black on the outside).

So she and a buddy in the kitchen were trying to roast peppers on an electric stove. If I remember the story right, someone else came into the kitchen and asked who was smoking. It was then they realized that the charring peppers smelled like weed. She never roasted peppers on an electric stove again. :o)

While we ate our antipasti, Chef Karen made the filling for the ravioli. Peas, mint, a bit of salt and pepper. Then we all got up again, some of us to start rolling out our pasta and some to work on making the fennel cream sauce to go with it.

I was proud to pick up a knife and follow her directions to notch out the core on the fennel and cut the bulb in half, putting one half on each of two cutting boards. My knife skills are nothing to write home about, but it was easy to take the top off the fennel, notch out the core and split the bulb with the nicely sharp chef’s knife. I did so with no fear, and with a little excitement to be able to show off what skills I do have for someone who would recognize that I was no stranger to a kitchen.

What made it even more fun was that Marty was at the other station doing the same thing. We got to simultaneously work on two pans of sauce. It was really fun to cook with him! I hope I get to do it again soon!

Once the ravioli were cooked and sauced, we sat down to eat again. So delicious, so fresh. Beautiful for a spring night. And lovely with the wine they poured.

Oh. Did I forget to mention that they were serving wine as well? A white and a red. Which they poured pretty liberally. If your glass was empty, they offered to fill it.

The antipasti was also wonderful, by the way. I’m not usually a fan of either eggplant or cauliflower, but I LOVED both of the dishes! Roasted peppers I liked already, so there was no surprise. But the other two? I would totally make them at home and they were fabulously tasty!

Our final course was the meat course, which consisted of chicken breast with prosciutto and sage. Very classic Italian flavors.

We pounded the chicken fairly flat, laid on a slice of prosciutto and some sage leaves, rolled it, sliced it in ½ inch pieces, skewered it and put it in the oven to bake.

While we waited for them to cook, Chef Karen showed is a neat trick with grape tomatoes. Put a layer of them between two plastic lids (like from a Glad or Ziploc container), take a sharp knife and slice between the lids. Voila! A bunch of halved tomatoes! She talked and made a quick tomato compote which was served with the chicken.

I have to say, this was my least favorite part of the meal. The chicken was overcooked, so it was dry. The fat from the prosciutto wasn’t enough to help. But, they would be great on the grill, so I might have to try the recipe this summer when grilling season finally arrives.

It was such a fun evening! I got to spend time with Marty, which never happens! I got to cook in an amazing kitchen with a lot of fun people and I learned at least one new skill.

I want to go back and take their knife skills classes. Chef Karen teaches them. And I’m going to take my knives there to be sharpened when I’m off work for my birthday. They’re having their monthly knife sharpening event on May 2. Take your knives in and for 3-6 bucks per knife, you get them well sharpened. Pick them up the next day.

Again this week I was reminded that my love of cooking and eating is tied so tightly to my love of my friends and family. It is true that I love to cook. It is more true that I love to do it for and with those I love.

No comments: