“To eat is a necessity but to eat intelligently is an art”
– Francois La Rochefoucauld
This installment of A Seattle Experience is all about… cooking!
Thanks to the lovely people over at Hot Stove Society – Tom Douglas’s answer to chef inspired cooking classes. Young Professionals of Seattle Board Members and I got to experience what it like is to cook amazing Italian food from chef Bridget Charters – a world class, chef, teacher, and producer.
Quick note: Hot Stove is located in Downtown Seattle, inside of the Andra Hotel right above Tom Douglas’s restaurant Lola, a Greek infused menu with local ingredients. We suggest grabbing a drink at their bar beforehand, heck it’s got some great ambiance.
Class started at 6 pm and we were greeted by a friendly staff and a complimentary glass of wine, we were already in our happy place.
For this specific class called “Tuscan Summer Dinner”, Bridget began by giving an instructional on how to prepare our upcoming meal, specifically guiding us through the more unique ingredients (who knew chicken stomach lining could be so fascinating). We listened, took it all in and went to the community wood tables and got to work.
The stoves were hot, the ingredients were fresh and the atmosphere was all about enjoying the process of cooking
The staff was there to guide us through but in no time we had created a really gorgeous meal. For all of you wondering here’s what we cooked:
Bruschetta (pronounced Bru-Ske-Ta) we learned means: burnt bread we added smashed tomatoes and fresh garlic.
Skewers with, sausage, chicken livers (wrapped in stomach lining) and local veggies.
Homemade pasta rolled out in a thick spaghetti form (and a sauce that I think should be bottled, cooked by the staff)
We’ll keep the dessert a mystery, mostly because we can’t remember the name, but the mixture was rice, meringue, and eggs whipped together then deep fried and sprinkled with powdered sugar, deliciousness!
After putting our meal together it was time to sit down and enjoy! We ate our hearts out and thankfully, I noticed most of us had enough food to take as leftovers. No judgement, please, but that pasta tasted amazing for breakfast!
So there you have it, a two hour cooking class that took us all the way to Italy and back!
