Fun Cooking Class in Santa Monica

Handmade Ricotta Cheese on Crostini

Tonight I went to Trufflepalooza at the Gourmandise Cooking School in Santa Monica with two of my culinary-minded friends. It was fun and delicious though things got strange when we started making jokes and taking photos with the truffle infused hard salami.

In all seriousness, we really enjoyed the class and teacher, Erika, who regaled us with stories of cooking with and buying truffles. Apparently she bought 1 lbs of truffle for personal use and actually used it (that is a lot of truffles – truffles are typically weighed and sold by the ounce). She had tons of recipes and fun stories about cooking with truffles – many of the recipies were made with dairy so I have to try them out on my friends since I could not indulge.

The Gourmandise Cooking School is in the Santa Monica place. Our class had 10 students and was hands on – which was a negative only because one student came late and did not initially wash his hands (gross). The teacher was knowledgable and the recipes were doable and not fussy. They have a lot of other classes and I can recommend the cake baking class which I took privately several years ago. This class cost $125 and lasted 4 hours. My husband enjoyed the chocolate truffles made with truffles that I brought home as leftovers.

Another thing I liked about the school is that they were not pushing product, though I would have appreciated being able to buy some of the ingredients. In particular, I liked truffle infused salami. I also loved and will buy the Sabatino honey and black truffle butter. Sabatino products can be purchased at Surfa’s in Culver City or on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Sabatino-Black-Truffle-Oil-3-4oz/dp/B002KBLJ20.

Gourmandise Cooking School http://www.thegourmandiseschool.com/index.php

Erika’s Blog http://www.inerikaskitchen.com/ - her blog has a lot of good recipies.