Rustico Cooking Information

We believe good food does not need to be complicated. In fact, the best food is often the simplest. Our recipes and our cooking style reflect this fact. Fresh ingredients, treated simply and with respect, are the foundation of memorable meals. We do not complicate simple recipes just so that our students and class participants can walk away with a sense of accomplishment. Rather, we emphasize cooking techniques that most effectively draw out flavor from each ingredient in a dish. And we make cooking fun, so that people are actually motivated to do it on a regular basis, instead of being intimidated by lengthy processes and hard-to-find ingredients. This also means that we do not use any processed ingredients or pre-packaged food in our cooking. All our stocks, broths, and sauces are homemade. Nothing goes to waste, and everything we incorporate in our cooking is natural. After enjoying a meal cooked in our kitchen, you will feel satiated, never heavy. In order to facilitate the learning process and allow us to spend more time focusing on the relevant techniques of a given class (say, making fresh pasta from scratch, rolling out flaky pie crust, stuffing ravioli, kneading pizza dough), we chop, prep, and measure all necessary ingredients before students arrive. The onions are minced, the potatoes washed, the flour and sugar measured. This way, we can spend longer mastering truly essential cooking techniques. To ensure all class participants learn the most important parts of a given menu, certain key techniques (such as making fresh pasta dough from scratch) will be executed by class participants in small teams. One last thing: we believe food should be delicious, and every meal should be a celebration. So when you come to our kitchen, you will not only learn how to execute a menu; you will also learn how it should taste, because the food we make in your company is always flavorful, fresh, and satisfying.