Page 31 of Decidedly Off Limits

“You probably know him better as Joshua Hoffer from the San Francisco Rock.” The city’s NHL hockey team.

If I thought she had been surprised when I showed up unannounced in class, that was nothing compared to now. She stared at me as if I had just announced I was running for the Presidential office. In my underwear. “You…you know Joshua Hoffer?”

“Erin never mentioned it, huh?”

She shook her head slowly. “No, somehow she forgot to mention that.”

I wasn’t too surprised. Erin had pointed out several times that she thought he was an ass after meeting him one time with me at a charity event. I guess she did have a point there. He could be one when it suited him, which was more often than not.

Which meant I didn’t have to worry about her asking me to set Josh up with Kelsey. An eternal blizzard would hit hell before that ever happened.

We didn’t get to talk beyond that. Chef André started the class. After explaining how the class would be conducted, he motioned for us to join him up front for the first demonstration.

“We’ll begin with French onion soup,” he announced. “Because it takes forty-five minutes to an hour to caramelize the onions, I will only demonstrate how to make it. The recipe is included in the package I’ve given you.”

He showed us how to cut the onions and how to cook them. Then he set the saucepan aside and removed another one from the stove, with onions that had been cooking for an hour.

“The next step is to deglaze the pot with the sherry.” He poured the alcohol in and scraped the onions sticking to the bottom with a wooden spatula. “Next comes the beef consommé…” Which he also poured into the saucepan. A delicious, rich aroma filled the classroom. “And then the vegetable stock, apple cider, thyme sprigs, parsley, and bay leaf.” He dumped in each ingredient as he listed it. “I will now allow it to simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes. And while it’s cooking, I’ll prepare the topping.”

He demonstrated how to cut the bread so that it fit the tops of the soup crocks, then ladled the soup into the bowls and covered them with the bread. “And for the finishing touch, we add grated Gruyère and broil for a minute or two, until the cheese is bubbly and brown.” He put the cookie sheet with the four crocks in the oven, and removed it a minute later.

And my taste buds pleaded to sample some.

“That wasn’t too bad,” Kelsey murmured.

“I think we can manage that,” I said, even if I had tortured a couple of innocent eggs in an attempt to make breakfast for her.

Next came mushroom ravioli.

“To make the ravioli, I recommend a pasta maker, but you can also just roll out the dough,”André explained. “For this class, we will be using pasta makers.” He finely chopped a shallot.

Kelsey leaned closer to me. “How does he do that without slicing off the end of his finger?”

“Good question.” The man looked like a martial arts expert with his knife-wielding skills. Mugging assholes, beware!

“Next are the mushrooms. You can use any type you like. I prefer a mix of portobello, oyster, and shiitake.” Like with the shallots, he finely chopped them. Then he sautéed the mixture, along with garlic and other seasonings, and demonstrated how to make the ravioli. It was hard to focus on what he said when the only thing my stomach was interested in was eating. The woody yet robust aroma of the mixture tormented me, and I tried not to look like an idiot by sniffing the air too much. But it wasn’t just the food I could smell. Kelsey’s scent was damn good too.

Once the demonstration was over, we were sent back to our workstations so we could make the ravioli ourselves. Kelsey picked up the knife and studied it for a moment. The way she was eyeing it, you’d have thought she expected it to come alive and attack her.

“Do you want me to do the chopping?” I asked.

“Sure.” She handed me the knife and watched me chop the shallots then the mushrooms. “Have you done this before?”

“Nope.”

“Really?”

I shrugged. “It’s not that hard. You try.”

She took the knife from me and began chopping the shallot. Unlike Chef André’s and mine, her attempt yielded pieces that were far from finely chopped.

The corner of my mouth jerked up to one side. “I’m sure you have other talents.” Then I winced at how that sounded.

To my surprise, she grinned. “You better believe it, chopper boy. Just watch me nail the pasta.”

Naturally my brain and everything south of the equator perked at the thought of getting to “nail” Kelsey. It took everything I had to redirect my attention back to the ravioli.

Now, there’s something you should know about making pasta from scratch…it’s nothing like opening a package of dried pasta and dumping it into boiling water. The mixing of the flour with the egg was a breeze. Kelsey rolled the dough out into a rectangle, but when I tried to thread it through the pasta maker, it was too wide. It took her several attempts to get it narrow enough to slip in.