The Non-Cooking Cooking Class

Back in June, Groupon ran a deal for a cooking class at Mama Campisi's.  You may recognize the name of it as where Tony tackled the meatball challenge.  After talking about doing the challenge for two years, he decided that he just HAD to do it the night before we did the cooking class. Anyway, before 8 a.m., both Tony and Jean had mentioned wanting to take the class, so I bought it.  We selected a date from the 8 options, and purchased the Groupons.  Now, anyone that knows me knows that I have cooked less than 10 times in my entire life.

I was actually a little excited about it.  I thought that it would be fun, and my lack of skills could provide some entertainment!  Unfortunately, this was not at all what we were expecting.  For starters, there were 50 people crammed into a much too small room.  They had it set up with with 5 tables and 10 people to each table.  We managed to grab 3 seats at a table.  Everyone was packed in like sardines with zero elbow room.  You had to do a tap dance with the table next to you to get the chairs in and out!

At the end of each table, they had a large round table.  The ingredients for the lasagna dish were set out on top.  When we picked the class, they didn't specify what we would be cooking.  I was hoping for their signature dish pollo spedini which is amazing.  The 10 people at the table worked together to assemble the lasagna.  It was a little ridiculous - 10 people working on a 7 ingredient dish.  It wasn't even made with the traditional lasagna noodles -  these were one size that fit the entire pan.  You didn't even have to assemble the lasagna noodles!  Even though 3 people at our table were left out of the process completely, I did manage to do some "cooking."  I was in charge of adding the parmesan cheese to each layer.  If I do say so myself, I did an excellent job!

Once we were finished, they took our dishes away to cook.  While they were in the oven, we enjoyed a delicious bruschetta and listened to stories about the Italian history of The Hill here in St. Louis.  Our dishes were returned to us about half an hour later.  Even though it wasn't what we were expecting, we all had a good time!  Plus, the lasagna was absolutely delicious.  I'm not a huge fan of lasagna, but this was quite yummy!