The Grill-Meister gave me a great gift for my birthday this year: a certificate for a cooking class date night in which we would learn how to make fresh pasta.
Cooking class for a date night? Really??? Heck, yeah!!!
I’ve been looking forward to this event for six weeks, and it finally arrived this past Wednesday when we sauntered in to the Well Done Cooking Class in Houston, ready to be schooled in pasta.
I’ve never been to a cooking class before, although I was an occasional informal sous chef for a very talented and quite eccentric semi-retired chef when I was a teen (but I digress, that’s definitely a long story for another time). And I’ve never made fresh pasta, either, unless you count one time when I watched, fascinated, as another chef friend did some quick things with his hands and then, voila! – pasta. I didn’t catch anything beyond “make a well with the flour…”
So – this cooking class date night was a welcome new experience that exceeded my expectations and was a terrific birthday gift for a foodie with a gap in her skills. We were too busy cooking to take many photos, but check this out – in three hours, we:
- made fresh pasta dough and then put it the refrigerator to rest and chill
- made fresh sweet potato gnocchi with a brown butter and sage sauce (photo below)
- retrieved our pasta and made three different dishes
- ravioli with a squash, ricotta, smoked bacon and basil filling
- tortellini with the same filling (who knew that tortellini was just one more twist of the pasta after making the ravioli shape???)
- fettuccini carbonara with Italian sausage
- Ate it!
Wow! I never realized it was this easy – or quick – to make homemade fresh pasta. As I said earlier, it was definitely a gap in my foodie education.
In addition to learning how to make the pasta dough, it was fun using the pasta roller and the gnocchi board (I never heard of a gnocchi board, but it is now on my Christmas list). The best part of all this is that the Grill-Meister is now all fired up about making fresh pasta, and I suspect he will emerge as the Fresh Pasta Lead here at Glover Gardens. He is already the Pizza Dough Lead and, of course, is out in front when it’s time to grill anything.
You can expect to see some Glover Gardens pasta recipes here soon, once we have it all figured out.
Copyright 2017, Glover Gardens Cookbook
Eagerly awaiting your recipes!
I’ll tell the Grill-Meister to hurry up! (He’s actually planning to make the fettuccini today.)
I have always wanted to make my own pasta 🙂 looks delish!
EmelyeKay, I truly couldn’t believe how easy it was. I don’t know why I’ve been scared of it all these years. I can make hollandaise, for goodness sake – why would pasta scare me? Anyway, I’m probably going to have to get a gym membership to balance out the pasta proliferation at Glover Gardens. 🙂
How awesome is this and happy belated birthday my dear. Hoping you had a fantastic one.
Thank you so much! I have enjoyed your travel reports and have so much empathy about your time with your Mom, and her health struggles. Peace to you.
I know you do Kim and I’m sure can relate with some, if not all. It’s a challenge, but I hope to have a better understanding that her illness is ugly and causes things she can not mean otherwise. It still is hard and things remain unresolved.
That gnocchi looks sensational. A great dish and date night.
Sue – yes! The gnocchi was super-easy to make, and yet it tasted like some Italian grandma had slaved over it for hours. So rich and tasty! And it was fun using the gnocchi board, like we were playing with our food. 🙂