10 On The 10th: August 2023

My "10 on the 10th" for August features a really fun date that Dave and I had. We had been looking for a way to celebrate our anniversary (which was back in June) and hadn't really been able to agree on anything fun to do. However, one night we were at Sam's soccer game, batting around different ideas, and Dave suggested, "How about a craft night?" and then I countered with, "How about a cooking class?" and, after a quick Google search, we found an Italian cooking class for the next night at a fun kitchen store a twenty minute walk from us. So we signed up.

Ready to learn something new...

We started with making pasta from scratch. Now, we've done this with my parents but my dad always makes the pasta dough and the kids always use the pasta maker so I don't really feel like I get to experience a lot of it.

 We also got to make a salad and now I will never give away the fennel from our CSA again. This salad with fennel, radicchio, French radishes, endives, and avocado was so good. Yum!!! We also learned about making homemade dressing.

This was the plate of ingredients for our pasta sauce. My only complaint about the entire experience was that we were put into groups of four. Last time Dave and I did a cooking class (we were gifted one for our wedding), it was just the two of us working together. We didn't know the other two people in our group of four so that was sometimes a little awkward.

While there was a pasta machine there to get the dough to the desired thinness, I appreciated learning how to do it by hand. I will have to roll it by hand at home so I wanted to learn how. Rolling by hand was so much faster that I actually had time to roll two batches while everyone else was waiting their turns at a pasta machine. Dave and one other person also learned to roll theirs by hand.

We made a lemon-asparagus cream sauce and it was so good!

The final product was served with a poached egg on top. The worst part was the class started at 6pm and we didn't eat until about 8:45. I was so hungry by the time we actually got to eat!

I would have loved to learn how to make dessert but we ran out of time. This was poached pears in wine with walnuts, chocolate, and honey goat cheese. It was also very good!

This was a super fun date night and Dave and I are already trying to figure out which classes we can take next. They have a "bread and butter class" which sounds delicious as well as a "winter cocktails" offering which I'm highly tempted to sign up for.

Now, does anyone want to come for dinner? Homemade pasta and the tastiest salad ever are on the menu!