miami fav #105 / an italian cooking class
i bet you didn’t know miami has its very own dante club. i didn’t either. until i did a little google-ing. i had been dying to take a cooking class for forever. although i knew it would be hard for me to choose which ethnic cuisine i wanted to delve into, i was pretty sure i would choose italian. because, really. who doesn’t want to cook like an italian? and as much as i love sushi, i think i also like the idea of walking to planet sushi a mere 2 blocks from my apartment and having them make it for me. italian food though, i could do. as far as cooking classes are concerned, i found that most are out of my price range. but finally the clouds parted and a $65 cooking class for 3 hours showed up and sounded pretty reasonable to me. honestly, i had been waiting long enough. the cooking class was hosted by the dante club. being a huge fan of the inferno (yes, i was a lit major, and yes, i am a huge dork), i knew i could get behind this club and that whatever they offered was probably going to be good. and i was not disappointed. they held the class at la cuisine gormet in the gables. and they scored an amazing chef personality for the course - sandra stefani. i got to roll gnocchi, chop some lettuce, watch a real chef live in action, make some friends, and at the end break bread and share wine with the stellar sandra stefani. by the time the class ended at 1:30 pm we had made eggplant towers (which was like an explosion of flavor in your mouth with eggplant, tomato, garlic, spinach, balsamic, olive oil and gorgonzola cheese), gnocchi ignudi (that melted on your tongue), fish wrapped in lettuce (which was perfection) and semifreddo con gli amaretti (which should translate to a frozen piece of heaven). that doesn’t even include the bread with Italian olive oil and the wine. the italians like to eat; and if all italians can cook like that, i don’t blame them. needless to say, i needed to walk it all off on miracle mile after. but, i’m not complaining. actually, i want to do it all over again.
