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Early on in our relationship, my husband and I did not get along in the kitchen. I liked doing things my way, and he did things his way. This resulted in a lot of, “Why are you doing it like that?” and, “No you have to do it this way because you’re doing this next.”🙈 Not a good time, let me tell you. We figured out that we need to both read a recipe before we start so that we have the same end goal in mind.

Ever since then, we’ve loved cooking together. We love trying new things, which is why classes at Sur La Table are so much fun to do for a date night!

Last fall we did our first cooking class at Sur La Table, which you can read about here. We cooked prosciutto wrapped shrimp with a basil dipping sauce, roasted potatoes, rosemary rubbed steak with a compound butter, and a chocolate bread pudding. It was to DIE for, and we actually cooked the bread pudding again as a treat this Valentine’s Day!

I can’t recommend this enough for a fun date night idea, no matter your age or stage of life.

In our first cooking class, the couple we were paired with was celebrating their 20th anniversary and had three (!) boys at home.

These classes are by far some of my favorite dates ever.

How It Works

For the “date night” classes, you and your significant other are at a station with one cutting board and all kinds of tools. You’re teamed up with the couple next to you, and the four of you work together on each part of the meal.

You cook enough for the four of you to eat, and you get to eat everything you cook there at your station. You can’t, however, take anything home. So you better believe I ate as much pasta as I wanted😉

You don’t go home hungry, believe me.

P.S., you can bring a bottle of wine with you and drink it during your class! Just bring your own glasses and a bottle opener.

You also get 10% off anything in the store that day, so we snagged these cutting boards that we used in the class! We loved them when we did our first class, but didn’t buy them. This time I told my husband we had to get them, or he’d be hearing about them for the next few months😂.

The Menu

The menu for our “Date Night: Little Italy” class was a classic Caesar salad with parmesan croutons, spaghetti with classic tomato sauce and hand rolled meatballs, and vanilla bean gelato affogato. It tasted as incredible as it sounds!

For the Caesar salad, we made our dressing from scratch, which always makes it so much better. Andrew had a serving of salad and really liked it (the man has eaten salad like, once in his life). If anyone knows who this impostor is and where my real husband went, please let me know.

My FAVORITE part of the class? Making pasta dough from scratch. It was so much easier than I thought! Our station had a table machine so we rolled out our pasta with that, but other stations had the KitchenAid pasta attachment. I preferred to do it old school, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that pasta attachment in the future.

We rolled out the pasta, cut it into spaghetti and it only boils for about a minute before it’s done. The taste was unlike any pasta I’ve ever had! Here is a great recipe for pasta dough and how to make it.

Update: I just ordered this ravioli making set and I’m so excited!

The meatballs were incredible too. I’d never thought of combining two meats (in this case, Italian sausage and ground beef). It added such a complex flavor and I can’t wait to experiment with some other combinations. This recipe is really similar- just use half ground beef and half Italian sausage (or any combination you’d like) The tomato sauce was so simple- the way a good tomato sauce should be. This meal can definitely be recreated at home!

Have you tried a cooking class or have any other favorite date night ideas? I’d love to hear!

Thanks for reading,

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