Enjoyed some fun with a friend, met some new people, learned how to cook some dishes, and enjoyed some gourmet food! Great experience!
My good friend Amy and I went to Sur la Table at King of Prussia Mall, where the staff was so helpful and knowledgeable! We found ourselves in a Date Night Cooking Class, but we made the best of it and provided some classic goofy entertainment for the couples on dates!
1st we started with the dessert, Chocolate-Orange Pot de Crème! 
This is served in little ramekins like Crème brûlée, but the enclosure is more similar to chocolate ganache in a bowl. The dessert should take 4 hours to make; however, the expert chefs used the freezer to speed up the process while we started on our other preparations.
The chef taught us the proper way to “work a knife” – holding it, to not strain your index finger, using the pinch technique (see photo), and then be sure your knuckles guide the knife to keep from slicing your fingers!
To prepare the Fennel and Parmesan Salad, we chopped up some fennel, chives and lemon. Fennell is one of the 
world’s healthiest super foods, containing unique phytonutrients with antioxidant, potassium, manganese and has many health-promoting effects. The vegetable looks like an onion, but surprisingly tastes like black licorice, reminding me of some bad Sambuca experiences of my past. (FYI: Sabuca is an Italian anise-flavored liquor that is easy to sneak out of your parents liquor cabinet because no one will miss it). However, with the lemon-butter-parsley sauce and shaved parmesan, the overbearing taste of the fennel was neutralized, so we actually rather enjoyed this healthy veggie! The completed dish was green and white with the chopped parsely-just in time for St. Patty’s Day! I personally thought it could have used some more veggies, like cucumber or tomato, or even some chopped onion – but that that’s just me! Either way, a refreshing dish!
Then we moved onto the appetizer, Pan-Seared Scallops with Prosecco Butter Sauce. I do not usually like scallops and I mentioned a little too much, so the instructor actually stopped and said, “but I promise you, the way we cook with a crisp outside and the incredible sauce, you may just be surprised”. And boy, was she right. The trick was being sure that the scallops were super dry before
prepping – letting them sit on paper towels in the refrigerator and then searing them in the pan with oil first, flip and then remove from pan. This created a scallop with super crispy outside. Then, the best part was the sauce using Prosecco, which is basically an Italian champagne, butter, seasonings and oil to create a lush sauce. This dish was amaze-balls! The scallops didn’t have that super chewy consistency that I abhor, and I the sauce made the meal for sure! I could eat Anything with that sauce.
Onto the main course: a seared New York Strip Steak with Chianti-Red Wine Sauce. Rubbing down the steak with oil I yelled out “too bad I’m a vegetarian”, everyone in the class including the instructors stopped and dropped their jaws. “Just kidding – carnivore here!”. And happily went about seasoning the steak with some salt/pepper. I’ve never cooked steak on a frying pan so it was an interesting method. I missed some of this part of this while Amy and I took beauty shots with our salad – we’re hams (as you will see here)! Then I came back over to the stove just in time for the Chianti sauce which contained some chives, spices, oils and of course Chianti wine. I knew I would love this dish – it’s similar to what I order when we go out to eat at a steak house. The cooking school was a BYOB, but we “didn’t get that memo”, so we were at first disappointed. Then we were overly excited when one of the couples shared their bottle of Bogle Pinot Noir, which paired perfectly with the steak!
Just in time – then the dessert was finished and we topped off a delicious date night with the incredible Chocolate-Orange Pot de Crème. I was happy that the orange did not overpower and was just a slight hit from the Grand Marnier. Although I don’t have a “sweet tooth”, I do enjoy chocolate and love me some ganache, so this treat was perfect!
We took some more pictures, probably making all the couples say “what was their deal?” but we had an excuse – this blog!! We thanked the staff, bought some mini salt/pepper grinders with 10% off and then went on our way with full bellies! They also gave us recipes for each of the menu items, which I will probably never use because I’m “not a complex recipe follower – and I wing it mostly). But, it was nice to learn some new techniques and some standard sauces that can be reworked w/ different ingredients!
Cheers to cooking up something exciting this Spring!
Plants Power Purpose 