Sunday, January 21st, 4:00pm
Featuring recipes from My Calabria by Rosetta Constantino
$175 per person, price includes the demonstration, dinner, wine pairings, and a copy of My Calabria cookbook
We are excited to announce that our cooking demonstrations have returned! In the months of January, February, and March, Chef Lou will be hosting one cooking demonstration per month featuring recipes from some of his favorite cookbooks. Each class will follow the same format as before the pandemic, a cooking demonstration in our dining room followed by dinner with wine pairings.
Call to reserve for one, two, or all three classes, 540-253-5501. Or give the gift of our cooking demonstrations by purchasing a gift certificate. Perfect for the avid cook, the avid eater, or Italophile! Other classes to take place on Sunday, February 18th, and Sunday, March 3rd.
About the Author
Rosetta Constantino
“I was born and raised in Verbicaro, a small wine-producing hill town in Calabria, at the southern tip of the Italian peninsula. My parents shaped my connection to food and the land. My father was a master cheesemaker and winemaker, tending our family’s olive groves, vineyards and farm where we also kept goats and sheep. Almost all our food came from our property or the nearby Mediterranean. My mother and grandmothers knew how to live from the land, how to grow vegetables and preserve them for the winter months, and how to make bread and friselle from scratch. They knew how to make pasta with only flour and water and shape it every which way, even rolling it around a knitting needle to make the famous Calabrian fusilli.
As a child, I learned from them. I took wheat to the mill, returning home coated from head to toe in white flour. I watched them press olives into oil, and inserted strips of tomatoes into the glass bottles we used to preserve them.
My parents and I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when I was 14 years old. We quickly settled into the faster pace of life here but always kept our cooking traditions. We still grow our own produce, make our own ricotta and cure our own salsiccia Calabrese. After 20 years of working in Silicon Valley, I retired and became a stay-at-home mom, honing the kitchen skills that I learned from my mother and grandmothers. Then, in 2004 an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Calabria from Scratch”, was written by celebrated food writer Janet Fletcher. It was about my family and how we kept all the traditions of Calabria in a small corner of Oakland, California. Working on this article with Janet inspired me to share the cooking of my native land.”
