Penne For Your Thoughts

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night my Seeester and I got down to our Italian roots and attended a pasta making class at the Culinary Center of Kansas City. It was a lot of fun, we ate some delicious food, we got some hands-on experience making fresh pasta and we brought home a bounty of handmade spinach tagliatelle. Chef Cody Hogan was our instructor for the evening. He is the chef de cuisine at Lidia’s in Kansas City and spends a great deal of time with Lidia as her assistant, food stylist and studio chef for her television spots. I asked him if he ever spends any time with her son, Joe, and if he is as intimidating in person as he is on MasterChef. Chef Hogan politely responded that, yes, he is an intense person.

A couple glasses of wine and our pasta making experience afforded my Seeester and I many opportunities to make inappropriate, yet hilarious, comments. I mean, how can you resist when you are talking about balls (of dough), making it fit into the crank machine, and wondering why its not getting longer? Celia, the older woman who shared a table with us, got quite a few chuckles from our conversation. We made our own Spinach Dough using an adapted version of Lidia’s recipe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we weren’t getting our hands (and minds) dirty, Chef Hogan was busy demonstrating three different dishes to the class. All three pastas were delicious. Too bad the photos aren’t scratch ‘n sniff.