10. Take a foreign cooking class

This was a rather unexpected thing that we ticked off my list - but it is one of my favourites so far! :) My Love, my parents, and I all attended a cooking class in Palo Alto! It was called the ‘Date Night: Italian Feast’ cooking class held at the Sur La Table store, and we made the following:

     Arugula and Fennel Salad with Blood Orange Dressing

     Osso Buco with Citrus-Herb Gremolata served with Creamy Parmesan Polenta

     Mascarpone Semifreddo with Caramelized Apples

*drool* I am salivating just remembering it! It was so much fun, we learned about the different types of utensils and kitchenware we were using, I even picked up some awesome tips for egg whites which will hopefully help with my Pavlova technique! They are:

•     When making meringue (or pavlova one assumes) to get more volume just leave the egg whites out over night before you start working with them - she explained how that works, I might find out why and update this later


•     The alcohol content in vanilla essence can have a negative effect on the crust of your meringue (again; or pavlova one assumes) - to ensure that you have a delicious crunchy crust use vanilla paste instead!

It was SO much fun and I learned so much. It did, however, increase my lusting after a stand-mixer, not even bringing into the equation how much cheaper Kitchenaid stand mixers are in America than they are in New Zealand! *wimper* …. my time for a stand mixer will come, I hope!

The course was fantastic and you walk away with an awesome experience under your belt as well as a booklet with the recipes you used. Also that store is HEAVEN for any foodies, we spent a half hour wandering around the store before our cooking was served up for dinner, and my goodness! Every 30 seconds I had found something new I wanted to buy, unfortunately three of our party were about to fly away so there was not nearly enough suitcase space for all of the things we wanted. I bought my Love a nice sharp kitchen knife after doing battle with the ones in his kitchen for the previous week or so. Even my Dad (Dr. “glacé-cherries-would-go-great-in-an-omelette”) had a good time, and learned some new tips and tricks that might re-spark his culinary talents (he’s not bad - just out of practise I think), but that remains to be seen.

I think I will do another one when I am heading back for the fourth of July. I spent two days after the class just trawling through the cooking classes and stumbled across their Culinary Vacations, where you pay XXXX amount of dollars and it covers hotels and cooking classes and tastings in New York, or London, or a few other places (airfares not included), they are VERY expensive for our budget, but my goodness, a girl can dream!

I will take more pictures of our creations next time, it completely slipped my mind!