Task 42 - Take a Cooking Class (Date Night - Romantic Italy)

Class Description: Bring your favorite date or friend and together combine ingredients to produce incredibly authentic, rustic and refined flavors of Italy. Under the instruction of our in-house chef, you’ll learn a variety of techniques. Prepare a savory appetizer, learn tips for cooking chicken, create a pan sauce, make a delicious side and finish with an incredibly decadent cheesecake. Savor the abundant flavors and learn simple preparation techniques so you may create a sumptuous Tuscan menu together at home.

Menu: Polenta Bites with Gorgonzola and Olives – Prosciutto-Wrapped Chicken Breast with Lemon Sage Cream Sauce – Broccoli Sautéed in Wine and Garlic – Honey-Ricotta Cheesecake

Instructor: Jeff Kaye

For my birthday I decided to take another cooking class at Sur La Table. I have taken many before and always had a great experience and thought it would end a great day of fun at the circus. A few of my co-workers decided to join me and we selected Date Night: Romance in Italy because its menu sounded delicious.

The menu started off with polenta bites with gorgonzola and olives. I am not a fan of olives so this wasn’t really something that sucked me in but the Main entrée of prosciutto-wrapped chicken with a lemon sage cream sauce more than made up for it. For a side we would make broccoli sautéed in a wine and garlic sauce and to top it all off one of my favorites a cheesecake. Not just your typically cheesecake but a honey-ricotta cheesecake.

This class was taught by an instructor I had not yet taken a class with before. His name is Jeff Kaye and his background includes being a chef at several restaurants such as MetBar and Grill, Watch City Brewery and chef/owner of Fava Restaurant. In addition to his professional career he is an instructor at Cordon Bleu’s Boston Campus. 

After washing our hands and a brief introduction by Chef Kaye we got started right away on the first task. Some believe that desert is the best part of a meal and as such that is what we started with. No we didn’t eat it first but we did start our cheesecake since it takes the longest. The key to a great cheesecake is allowing it to set and as such it was the first of the courses we needed to prepare.

To help speed the process Chef Jeff had already prepared the graham cracker crust. The process isn’t difficult. You crush your graham crackers up and mix in melted butter. Form an even layer at the bottom of your spring form pans. Then bake the crust for 8-10 minutes to lightly brown it.

While it’s baking you want to mix the remaining ingredients. Using a mixer add the ricotta and blend until smooth. Then add the cream cheese and sugar until smooth. The last step is to add the honey and orange zest. Once everything is combined and smooth. Pour mixture into your prepared crust. Bake for 40-45 minutes at 325-degrees. Center will be slightly giggly. It will stiffen while cooling.

Before starting the appetizer Chef Jeff took a few minutes to review proper knife handling. He taught us proper technique and also a few tricks. Once comfortable we began prepping all of our remaining ingredients so when we begin cooking we wouldn’t have to stop to cut our vegies. This process is called mise en plas. It’s a French term for “putting in place” all the ingredients. Once done we organized all the ingredients on separate baking sheets and set all but one aside.

We started next on our polenta bites with a gorgonzola and olive tapenade. Polenta is one of those things that is very easy to make. You start off bringing your vegetable broth to a slow rolling boil. Then you slowly whisk in the polenta to avoid lumps. Once combined you keep stirring until the polenta has absorbed all the broth and begins to pull away from the sides of the pot. Once done we took the finished mixture and evenly distributed it across a baking pan. We let it cool in the fridge while we started our tapenade.

The tapenade is something I would totally change. I hate olives and this is very heavy on the olives. Using the food processor we combined our garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and olives in the bowl and pulsed until the ingredients were roughly chopped. Then we began adding ¼ cup of olive oil and pulsed to combine. 

The final step was assembly. We used a square cookie cutter to form small bite size 2”x2” squares of polenta and topped them with the olive tapenade. Rather than wait until the end we took that opportunity to sample our first course. I topped my polenta bites with just a little gorgonzola. I won’t lie but these were not my favorite. They needed something but I’m not sure what.

After finishing the appetizer course it was a perfect time to take a break. While we explored the store the kitchen staff was cleaning up our mess and prepping for the main course. Chef Jeff joined us and showed off some of the tools he was using and explained what made one better then another. 

After about 15 minutes we returned to the kitchen and jumped right into our main entrée preparation. We started by working on the sauce. Every good pan sauce starts with butter and this entrées lemon sage cream sauce is no different. Using a saucepan we melted the ½ the butter over medium heat and then added our shallots and cooked until softened. Once soft we up’d the head to medium-high and added the cream, wine and broth. Once boiling we lowered the heat to medium and simmered the liquid until it reduced to about 1½ cups from the starting 3 cups of ingredients. Once reduced we removed it from the head and added the remaining butter and incorporated. Right at the end we added the chopped sage and lemon juice. We put aside on very low head just to keep it warm.

Next we seasoned our chicken with salt and pepper before wrapping each breast in a strip of prosciutto in a spiral. Then using canola oil we seared our chicken wrapped in prosciutto until nicely browned. Then we put the chicken on a baking sheet covered in foil and baked in a preheated 350-degree oven for about 15 minute of until the chicken wrapped prosciutto reaches 165-degrees.

While the chicken was baking in the oven we started our side. Our side for the evening was a broccoli sautéed in wine and garlic. To cook the broccoli we started with a large pot of water as “salty as the sea” on medium heat. We boiled the broccoli for about 3 minutes before draining it and blanching in to stop it from cooking any farther. You want your broccoli to be tender but not mushy.

In a skillet we cooked our shallots in a little canola oil until softened. Then we added the garlic and cooked until fragrant. Next we took our broccoli and added and tossed it until well coated with oil and garlic. Next we added the chili flakes and white wine and cooked until the sauce reduced by ½. We removed it from heat and added lemon zest and juice and parsley and tossed until combined.

The final step of the process was to plate the meal. We put our chicken and broccoli on the plate and put a healthy ladle of our lemon sage sauce over the chicken. We then all sat down and enjoyed the fruits of our labor. Everyone was in agreement that it was delicious. This is definitely a sauce I will make at home. It was quick and simple and extremely tasty.

Our dessert was served next and it was topped with fresh raspberries. While also very flavorful and delicious it didn’t quite set to its optimal firmness and as such was a little loose in the center. It is definitely a dessert I will give another try because I enjoyed the flavors but I would modify the recipe to make individual size cheesecakes instead of a larger one.

While the class started off a bit awkwardly Chef Jeff rose to the occasion and got all of us involved and interested in the process. While we enjoyed our desserts he recapped each recipe and added a few personal tidbits to help us repeat the menu at home. It was a great experience and I will be sure to take another classes hopefully sooner than later.