Cooking Event

I am not particularly crazy about cooking.But when our team organized an offsite at a cooking school, I wanted to try it out.

 

The event was conducted at the Draeger's Market in Menlo Park. A small section of the store is turned into a cooking school. We arrive there at 11.30am. The 15 of us were divided in 3 groups. 'Rustic Italian' was the theme for the day. 3 groups together was responsible for cooking up one complete meal. Keeping with the theme, the groups were appropriately named as 'Team Milan (my team, yay!),' Team Rome' and 'Team Venice.' Each team was also assigned a dedicated chef to help them.

Team Milan

Team Rome and Venice made a salad, grilled vegetable and dessert. 

Blending

Grilling

Our team was tasked with making 'Homemade Farafelle in creamy lemon sauce with peas and mint.' This was exactly what I wanted to make so I was thrilled. All ingredients were duly measure and prepped for us to work with. Our chef, Sukanya, had already kneaded some dough for pasta and also made a sample of the farafelle pasta. There was fresh flour, eggs and butter kept ready in the blender. All our team had to do was run the blender to get the dough kneaded. The next part was the most interesting. The dough was then put through a pasta maker and rolled multiple times to get flattened strips. These were then cut using serrated cutters and then pinched to make the bow-tie pasta. Everyone took turns to do this. Afterall we were making pasta for 15 people so we used all the help we could get.

Pasta making

More pasta making

I took up the job of chopping onions. I got started with it and chopped a whole bunch of them. Others busied themselves with zesting and juicing lemons, cutting cherry tomatoes and chopping mint leaves.

Chopping

Once all the vegetables were done, we moved on to make the sauce. Most were still occupied with the pasta so I took over the making of sauce. A large quantity of butter was melted, onions sauteed, heavy cream and spices were added. Post a few tastings and adjustments we were ready with the sauce. It was a fun experiment. With Sukanya in tow, I had no fear of going wrong.

Sauteeing

 

Once all teams were done, the final touch was provided by the chefs and post a 15 minute break, the meals were served. Unfortunately, I didn't click any pictures of the final product :( But it was a satisfying meal with the best dish being the pasta!

It is a fun place to be and can be an excellent team building activity. I hear kids host their birthday parties there although it is quite an expensive affair. Nevertheless I had a great time donning the Chef's apron followed by a delicious lunch. They even provided us a copy of all the recipes scaled down for 6.

What: Cooking class
Where: Draeger's Market 1010 University Dr, Menlo Park CA
Fee: $125