Cooking Class at Sur la Table

It’s a brand new year and many of us have made new year’s resolutions. One of my resolutions is to cook more at home. Cooking at home usually allows for eating healthier. How can you get motivated to cook more? One way is to get a jump start and take a cooking class. Last Sunday, my friends and I took a hands-on cooking class called Flavors of Italy at Sur la Table which was a lot of fun.
  
Our instructor was Chef Corey. Our kitchen class was made up of four teams of four and we made a soup, a salad, an entree, and watched our instructor make dessert.  
 With most ingredients washed, measured, and prepped, we made a Ribollita Soup which is a Tuscan bean and vegetable soup thickened with rustic bread. Chef Corey gave us tips on knife safety before we started chopping which I appreciated. We also used a gadget to remove the tough kale stems and help separate herbs which I used for the first time. 
 We prepared a Winter Greens Salad with Walnuts and Gorgonzola. Grilling radicchio on a grill pan is actually something I’m excited to start doing. Cold salads in the winter is not always appealing, so this is a great alternative. 
 The entree we cooked was a Marsala Braised Chicken with Mushrooms. The fragrance that olive oil, butter, shallots, and mushrooms permeate is one of my favorite scents.   
 The Butterscotch Budino with Olive Oil and Sea Salt is a dessert that takes time to set, so there was a batch already prepared for us. We watched as Chef Corey showed us how to make this tasty dessert.  

 The class took about 2 1/2 hours. At the conclusion, we enjoyed a delicious four course meal.   

 Are you motivated to cook now? Some other ways I have motivated myself to cook is to buy cookbooks written by my favorite chefs and subscribe to the New York Times Cooking Newsletter. I’ll be doing more cooking, so you can subscribe to this food blog or follow me on Instagram. If baking is your thing, my favorite website to go to is King Arthur Flour.