A couple of months ago, when I was signing up for my Intermediate Access class, I noticed that there was a series of classes that dealt with cooking various types of Italian dishes. As a birthday gift, D signed me up for one.
Start time was 5:30 yesterday, at 5:13 when I was adding another item into my Google calendar, I noticed that the class started in 17 minutes. SHIT. I raced out of the office and headed towards Whole Foods.
(Now, the Whole Foods is in a plaza with a Barnes and Noble, Walgreens, various restaurants and other stores and the parking lot can accommodate pretty much the Walgreen shoppers.) I find a spot and am going down the aisle with my blinker on and this other car swoops in from around the corner and steals it. Rage. I finally park, get into the store, go upstairs to the second level and get to class about 10 minutes late.
I walk in the - full - classroom and realize that my cooking class is really more of a $52 cooking demonstration. Fine. I pick up the recipes and the only seat left is in the last row, next to the trash can, sort of to the left of but mostly behind one of the supporting columns.
I look around at my classmates and I am the youngest person by at least 30 years, except for one or two people. Holiday sweaters, ahoy! There was one guy who appeared to be in his 40s that I thought was the teacher's husband at first because he kept going up to the kitchen area and helping her chop things, but no, he's just some random overzealous participant. Apparently, the rest of the class and him have been going to these lessons for a couple of years so they're asking him about his latest work trip to Africa and where he's going next and he's talking about a trip to Azerbijan and then someone else is like oh, this one time in Poland...pasta? Italy? In the row in front of me was a guy and a girl who were getting a bit irritated with helper guys brown nosing and the inanity of the rest of the class and would roll their eyes and make huffy noises and I have found my people.
All class long, some women kept asking about how to do different things with various tools and the teacher, Francesca, was just not giving in. Loved it.
- When toasting almonds: question, what type of pan is that? answer, just use shallow pan you have. followup, but that pan is more important than the almonds! answer, not in this class.
- When mixing flour into a pot of water to create gnocchi dough (a really cool method, actually): question, have you thought of doing this in a mixer with a dough hook? answer, no.
- When discussing simmering braciole for six hours: question, can you do this in a crock pot? answer, -withering glare- I don't use those.
- Talking about different flavors that can be added to gnocchi: question, don't you think it would be fun to make these like an appetizer with some sesame seeds? answer, ....
- Different types of pasta sauces: question, isn't there a type of sauce that has vodka in it? answer, yes, that's vodka sauce. follow up, vahhhhca sauce? what's that? is that an italian word? how do you pronounce it? is that a type of wine? answer, really?
- Question, what does antipasto mean? answer, before the meal. follow up, how is that different from an appetizer or hors d'oeuvres ? answer, is the same, one is the English term the other is the French. Followup, oh, then I think we should use the French term, it's much easier. answer, wha?
- Making eggplant rollatini: question, my mom always told me to buy a female eggplant, what's the benefit? answer, eggplants have genders?
And then. Francesca had an uncut eggplant and was trying to determine how to tell the gender and she picks it up and says well, I guess this would be the man, is smaller at the top and then gets wider at the base and she starts running her hands up and down the eggplant to demonstrate the increase. THEN. People from the class start to go up to do the same thing and I thought I was going to die from lack of oxygen. Eggplant violation!
Overall, the class was quite good. Francesca was hilarious and spoke just like one of my Grandmas. She was talking about one of the dishes and kept saying 'finish to cook' and making all the hand gestures and now I'm homesick :) When she was making the gnochhi, the class was saying how fancy a dish it was an it must be in the finest Napoleon restaurants and she was like, eh, not really, people make it so much at home it's very common, it's not something they'd want to pay for at a restaurant. You could tell that she was looking at the class like right, so I can't tell you that you're being kind of ridiculous but dudes, zomg.
And, (this is for you Tass), she could do the one handed egg crack. Cooking tip! When you add egg whites to a dish it makes it firmer, when you add egg yolks to a dish, it makes it softer. Who knew?
Now I need to figure out which pot I can afford to sacrifice when I try to make the gnocchi. Because dumping two cups of flour into two cups of boiling water (and an egg yolk!) can't possibly end badly.
