Cooking Class: Pasta, wine, and H1N1?

During the winter months I feverishly search the internet looking for activities to keep us busy and make these dreary winter months more tolerable. During my search I found that a local restaurant was going to be holding cooking demonstration classes each Saturday in January for twenty bucks! If you remember, Ben and I did a cooking class last year about this time, but it was sixty bucks, so this seemed VERY appealing.

Pasta and wine pairings 101 sounded like the class for us! A chance to learn how to make fresh pesto, risotto, stuffed raviolis and, of course, an opportunity to drink wine, one of my all time favorite activities.

We arrived early to ensure we got a seat at the front table. The class ended up being very full, 20+ people were in attendance. You could tell that this was a new venture for the chef and restaurant. They were taking pictures and seemed to still be working out the kinks as far as prep, serving, and demoing went.

The chef, being very eager to teach his new found foodie students, asked participants to help. The first opportunity came when he needed extra hands to pass out a few of the sample dishes. I'm not sure where the waitress was at this point, slacking in the back somewhere obviously. So a gentleman in his mid fifties stood up to help that was wearing old jeans and a wrinkled button up shirt that was un tucked. He seemed to me like someone who spends his days at home in front of the computer playing video poker. Ben and I were a little alarmed by this. On one hand, we're positive he didn't wash his hands prior to serving us. On the other hand, he did only touch the plates, not the food itself. Sooooo...duly noted.

The next opportunity for participant help came when the chef was mixing risotto. He needed someone to continue to stir and add vegetable stock while he prepped the wine glasses and discussed pairings. Again, the waitress was MIA. Our eager video poker player stood up to help out once again. The chef referred to him as his star student (apparently he's been every Saturday in January so far). He played with our food while the chef spoke. Ben and I, again, began to feel a little uneasy, but he wasn't touching our food, so no big deal. Right?

The last demonstration came with raviolis made from prepared wonton dough. He stuffed the first one with cheese, mushrooms and spinach, closed it up and asked for volunteers to finish the rest. A little hands-on action during a cooking class is always a good thing, but are you going to serve us those? Among the half dozen volunteers was our star student. While walking up to the counter I watched him lift up his shirt, scratch his backside and cough into his hand.

AFTER the participants were done germing up our food they wanted to know where they could wash their hands. This had our entire table in a hushed uproar. We couldn't believe it! While we were discussing amongst ourselves how incredibly wrong this was, our MIA waitress came out of the kitchen with raviolis already cooked. Whew! He was truly just demonstrating and had prepared the dish in advance.

After a careful head count he discovered he was two servings short, doh. So guess what? Yes he did. He took TWO of the raviolis that were groped by our classmates and "cooked" them (they spent 30 seconds in a sauce pan with a little olive oil). My ever so observant husband watched which tray they went on and looked on in horror as one got served to me and the lady next to me. I shrugged my shoulders and said, "I'm sure I've had worse," and ate it. I'm sure the wine killed whatever video poker dude was a dormant carrier of, right?

Overall, a great intimate setting for the class. We learned a lot but are starting to wish we would have gotten that H1N1 vaccination.