Southern Italian Cooking

Recently, three members of our book club participated in a southern Italian cooking class.  In preparation for this class, our optional reading selection was The Love Goddesses Cooking School, by Melissa Senate.  In this light read, Holly inherits her Italian grandmother's cooking school / deli and needs to improve her technique and skills to make the business thrive.  It was a decent read, but I think our cooking class was much more entertaining.

The instructor teaches all over the metro area, and has different themed cooking classes.  He has been a chef in several well known local restaurants, and now runs his own catering business and does these types of cooking classes.  In this course, we students mostly watched as he demonstrated techniques and prepared recipes.  I say mostly watched, because we did have the hands-on experience of making our own gnocchi, filling cannoli, and preparing the panzanella salad.  I think we also taught the instructor and the class some valuable lessons, like the importance of composting your leftover produce and egg shells.

The instructor was quite the riot and didn't mind making the occasional mess.  I've found most of the community ed instructors to be quirky for the classes I've enrolled in, and that makes them all the more fun.  My goals from this most recent class are to:
1)  Make my own marinara sauce
2)  Try making pesto (even if the food processor I just bought didn't work!)
3)  Whip together a panzanella (bread salad).  Who knew mixing together raw vegetables that I normally don't like on their own could be wonderful in a mix with toasted bread and a vinaigrette?
4)  Prepare at least one batch of gnocchi, even if it means I have to learn how to properly bake a potato