Valentine's Day Cooking Class

I'm fashionably late in reporting in on Valentine's Day, but I have been excited to tell you about this date of ours! Ryan is actually very good at planning dates - and he's really good when it comes to surprises, too! I was really excited to HAVE a date, because the start of this year has held unusual pieces that have made it impossible for us to have our normal amount of leave-town-for-the-day dates.

All I knew going into the evening was that I should dress comfortably and I wouldn't be wearing a helmet.

On the way, Ryan gave me "clues" - which really told me nothing, and then just short of resorting to Googling on my phone, he told me we would be going to Sur la Table for a cooking class! I had never heard of it before, but Sur la Table is a kitchen store that has a classroom in it. They offer classes of many kinds almost every day of the month, and over Valentine's weekend, they had a special one called Romance in Italy. And that was the one we we attended.

The store was a little over an hour from home, and although we left almost a half hour early, we barely arrived on time {thank you, traffic!!!}. Fortunately, they were running late there as well, so we didn't have to rush into class late.

The class holds sixteen students at four stations. They had everything set up and waiting for us when we arrived:

We found our station, put on our aprons and nametags, and met our cooking partners for the evening. They were another young married couple {we're young too, you know, but they were ACTUALLY young} and we thoroughly enjoyed working with them throughout the evening. Our chef was phenomenal. She did a great job of explaining steps and techniques and keeping an eye on all of us as we worked!

There were also three assistants floating around the room who kept our coffee cups full, our dirty dishes removed/washed/returned, and our fresh supplies delivered. I would like them to come live here, please and thank you.

While we cooked, we got to snacked on prosciutto wrapped asparagus. That's a pretty fancy pants snack for this Cheez-It family. :)

 {Sorry that's blurry - I was trying not to miss cooking instructions.}

First up, we made dessert, because it's the most important meal of the day. Or something like that. It was this chocolate mousse that smelled so good!!!

And after that was completed, we moved on to making our salad:

We also made a pan sauce for our pasta and we browned our steaks. {And our partners were just kind to take pictures for us.}

Here is our chef talking us through the finer points of pasta:

Once everything was cooked, they gave us a break to shop out in the store while they reset the room to make it our dining room!

I'll show you what we made, and they gave us the recipes so we can make the dishes at home, too. NONE of this was 21 Day Fix approved, and many of the ingredients are not anything close to what we have on hand, but despite those things, this was a delicious meal and a ridiculously fun experience.

Our salad was a shaved fennel and pear salad with bitter greens and pecorino:

Our main dish was porcini crusted beef tenderloin with a Chianti reduction and spaghetti alla carbonara.

And our dessert? Espresso Chocolate Budino with Frangelico cream.

And we loved it:

Thanks, Ryan, for a wonderful, creative date. I had so much fun!!!! :)