What better way to spend a Wednesday night than a hands-on Tuscan cooking class?
Well, I had the lucky opportunity to take a Clean Your Plate lesson with Chef Christina Dimacali with my school's preceptorial program.
[Preceptorials are small non-credit seminars that encourage learning for the sake of learning.]
When we first got to Christina's lovely home kitchen pictured on the left, we were greeted right away and given red aprons to wear before we started our class.
Here's a picture of some freshly chopped vegetables for the salad.
Don't worry if you don't have any cooking experience! Christina teaches you everything-- starting with knife skills and other basic techniques.
Apparently I had been chopping onions wrong my whole life. The key to cooking? Forward. Everything moves forward, starting with the direction of chopping.
When we were done chopping and mixing, ta da... the salad was complete! It was so delicious.
Pictured left: Tuscan Chard Salad with a Shallot-crushed red pepper vinaigrette.
The next appetizer we made was some White Bean Crostini. At first, our white bean mixture came out a little runny. We had to add some more bean to make it into more of a hummus-like consistency. It tasted like hummus too!
The key to the toasty bread? The bread was baked in the preheated oven for the nice crunch. Then it was lightly rubbed with raw garlic for a subtle garlickly hint.
Next, the gnocchi making began!
Making fresh, homemade pasta from scratch was a lot easier than I thought it would be. The most work went into kneading the dough. It sure was a good workout. (Helped burn off some of those carb calories for sure!)
For the gnocchi, we specifically used a grooved gnocchi board. We also made some cavatelli pasta too by rolling little pellets of dough and creating a groove with the side of a butter knife.
More gnocchi making! It was a lot of fun. I'm going to try my hand at making homemade pasta again some time. It tastes so much better than the packaged stuff and doesn't take [that much] more time and effort.
They look sort of weird before they go into the boiling pot, though. If you're not using the pasta right again, you can dry it out and use like packaged pasta or you can store it in the freezer for a couple months. (But really, why wait? You're gonna want to eat these right away!)
Now they're all done! The pasta floats to the top of the pot when ready.
The sauce we're making here though is a Mushroom Bolognese. The sauce also has some ground turkey for protein. The mushrooms and turkey go superbly together. And to finish it off, no bolognese sauce is complete without a dash of milk for that added creaminess!
And here's the pasta + sauce together. Absolutely delicious. Probably some of the best pasta I've ever had. (Or maybe I was just a little too hungry. After all, they did have us hard to work from 5 to 8 before we got any food to eat!)
Nonetheless, I loved this dish. If only I could replicate it on my own! I'll have to try when I finally have my own kitchen next year.
And last but not least, dessert. Here we made a Chocolate Olive Oil Cake with citrus zest. Now, I've never been a fan of the orange & chocolate. I more of a chocolate purist. I prefer my chocolate solo. But the flavors of this cake really worked for me. The delicate homemade whipping cream really helped seal the deal. It complemented the chocolate cake so well. I don't even think we used any flour in the cake batter but the end result came out so light and airy. (And can I even claim healthy? We, did use olive oil after all.)
I left this preceptorial stuffed and with a greater appreciation of all the time and effort behind cooking. The guys on Masterchef make it look so easy. I loved the class and Christina's constant exuberance and instruction. It also left me even more aware of all the leadership and delegation behind managing a kitchen. It's no easy task assigning everyone to little jobs that culminate in a delectable end result.
Boy, I'm going to need to find more adjectives for delicious: delectable, utterly divine, scrumptious, mouthwatering, tasty, delish!
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