Ben and I took a couple's cooking class at the Kitchen Table. It was AWESOME! We had so much fun! Our theme for the night was Napa Valley- Fall romance amongst the vines. We made a 3 course meal where each course was paired with a wine.
When we first got there we were greeted with a glass of champagne and appetizers. The class consisted of 12 people and 2 chefs. The chefs introduced themselves and went over what the evening would entail.
The evening was completely hands on where we made everything from scratch on our own. The chefs took us through each recipe step by step. They walked around to each station offering tips and making sure we didn't burn the kitchen down!
Our first course was rock shrimp ravioli with a roasted yellow pepper sauce paired with a Rutherford Ranch Chardonnay. It was so delicious! We made the pasta ourselves- and i was amazed at how easy it actually was. It was the first time I've ever made pasta! We prepared the filling and yellow pepper sauce and then cooked the raviolis in boiling water.
Our finished raviolis. I can't even begin to tell you how delicious these were! Probably my favorite of 3 courses we did.
Our second course was Coriander-marinated cornish game hens with Smashed red skin potatoes and Olive-oil poached artichokes. It was paired with a Robert Sinskey Vineyards Pinot noir. I missed taking a picture of this course, which I'm really bummed out about. They looked so good! The birds were a perfect golden brown color.
I learned so much during this class. They went over basic knife skills (who knew i was holding my knife wrong all these years!) I learned tricks for mincing garlic, how to easily dice an onion, and how to take the skin off hazelnuts.
During this course I learned so much! I learned how to truss a bird- (cross it's legs) without string, how to de-bone it and how to separate it- the breasts, the thighs, etc.
Our final course was a Chocolate hazelnut molten lava cake paired with a Bera Brachetto Piemonte. One of the chefs made ice cream for us to enjoy with the cake. I've never made a lava cake before, and always thought the "lava" is inserted into the cake. Wrong. It's all the same batter! To keep our hazelnuts from sinking to the bottom, we put a layer in the middle of the cake and garnished the top with them as well.
Our finished cake and ice cream! We were stuffed by the time we were done!
Here's a picture of the kitchen set up and one of our chefs, Gian Luigi. He's straight out of Italy, in case you couldn't tell by his name! Each couple had their own little set up- stove, oven, and work surface. I felt like we were on a reality show for the Food Network!
This is the dining area. The window on the left looks directly into the kitchen. Between each course they had an employee come in and bus the area. They reset the place settings and got rid of all the dirty dishes. We didn't have to worry about anything other than cooking! I could get used to not worrying about dirty dishes.
Our group was a lot of fun and everyone was super friendly. The evening lasted about 4 hours start to finish. Both Ben and I highly, highly recommend checking this place out! They have tons of classes and cuisines to chose from. And if you need someone to go with you, chances are we'd love to!
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