Taylor always goes to this one particular flower shop in Dallas and their flowers are simply breathtaking.
For this kind of rose, they flip the bottom petals over and it makes the rose a giant puff of beautifulness. Love love love!
The flower was accompanied with truffles from Dude, Sweet Chocolate, french bread and a chunk of gooey brie. Taylor knows me so well.
So as I mentioned in my last post, my sweet husband surprised me with a cooking class for Valentine's Day. We'd been wanting to try one for a while so I was beyond excited!
Taylor chose the "High Performance Cooking with Demeyere" class. The deal with this class is that they wanted to promote Demeyere's newest saute pan (available only at Sur La Table, of course!).
[Side note: in case you're not familiar with Demeyere, it is very similar to AllClad - good quality, stainless steal cookware]
Okay I know what you're probably thinking: a cooking class where they're trying to promote a new product sounds kind of meh - but believe me - it gets better.
Every person in the class gets to take home a brand new 3-Quart Demeyere Sauté Pan.
A cooking class AND two brand new pans?
Heck yes!
We arrived at Sur la Table about 10 minutes early and most of the class was already there (about 14 people total). We all had a seat in the back of the kitchen/classroom where an apron and list of recipes were waiting for us. The kitchen is a large room in the store and has chairs on one end, large prep tables in the middle (tall enough to stand at), and then a stove island and sinks/refrigerators/etc in the back.
This was our menu:
Crostini with Sage and Parsley Pesto
Caramelized Onion, Tomato and Cannellini Bean Soup
Seared Chicken Breast with a Chianti-Shallot Sauce
Profiteroles with Dark Chocolate Sauce
The chef began the class by introducing herself and then her assistants. She's been teaching these classes for a while and all kinds of culinary expertise. She explained that we were going to start cooking the soup course first and that they had pre-made the crostini in the interest of time. As she explained how to make the delicious little crostini, they passed a plate of them around for us all to try. YUM! After a 5-minute description of the Demeyere pan (yep, just a little tiny promo!), we all got cooking.
Each person had a cooking space set up at the tall tables with a cutting board, knife, prep bowls, and all of our ingredients in the middle of the table. The chef stood at the front of the classroom and her prep space had a mirror over it so you could see exactly what she was doing from above. It's hard to describe but it made it super easy to watch her - I was only able to take a few pictures after we had finished cooking but it kind of gives you an idea of the space:
Our chef began by teaching us knife skills. She showed us how to properly hold a knife, explained what the different parts of the knife are called, and how to tuck your fingers in while you're chopping so you don't get hurt. She also taught us how to chop - you know those cooking shows where chefs are furiously chopping away? We learned how to do that! It's a swooshing motion - that's the only way I can describe it! When you're doing it right you never take your knife off the cutting board. It totally revolutionized the way we chop!
After we were all knife pros, we started chopping veggies for our soup. We learned how to roll and chop kale (or any other leafy green) to get very thin strips. We also learned the "right" way to cut an onion and chopped up a lot of carrots, celery, garlic, and herbs. Finally we all gathered around the stove and helped mix everything into our soup.
At this point everything became a group process. Our chef had people helping stir the soup, some people helping get the chicken seasoned and cooked, and some people helping to make the chianti-shallot sauce.
When the soup was ready we took a little break and each had a bowl - it rocked!
After our snack, we all went back to our stations and helped make the profiterole dough (profiteroles are basically little puff pastry shells). We learned how to properly squeeze out the dough onto baking sheets to make the right shape puff and each got to try doing a few. After that we gathered around the stove again and helped make the chocolate sauce.
Finally, when everything was just about done we took another little break and when we came back everything was plated and ready to eat! It was delicious!!
The class was about 2.5 hours long - it was the perfect amount of time to get everything cooked and to get to know the other people in the class. Overall it was such a fun experience and the most perfect Valentine's Day gift my sweet husband could have come up with!
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