Peter Morrell goes to the KitchenAid Experience Store on London’s Wigmore Street and becomes an honorary Italian chef for the day
KitchenAid is renowned for its quality cooking appliances, and probably best known for its iconic stand mixer which is, this year, celebrating its 100th birthday. Over the century the company has created a large and impressive portfolio of products including ovens, microwaves and fridges. These are trusted by both home cooks and professional chefs.
You can see a comprehensive collection of KitchenAid products at their Experience Store on London’s Wigmore Street, This showcase location also doubles as the venue for cookery demonstrations and courses.
I recently went along for a pizza and pasta making courses. It was one of the most fun and rewarding days I have had for a long time. A civilised 10:30am start began with a cup of coffee, made with a KitchenAid espresso machine of course and a greeting from the very friendly team. Lisa, the cookery tutor, Mandy, the store manager and Nathan, the KitchenAid Brand Ambassador.
With a brigade of seven novice Italian chefs assembled, Lisa demonstrated the art of making pasta dough. It looked simple, Italian flour, three eggs, some salt, a quick whizz in the KitchenAid stand mixer and a light kneading. We then dispersed to our individual work stations to make the dough for ourselves. With some support from the team, we all did well at it, the instructions had been clear and precise.
I noticed that a camaraderie was quickly developing between the delegates as we all faced the same challenge.
With our cling film wrapped pasta dough chilling in a KitchenAid fridge we all came back together to learn how to making pizza dough. Again Lisa explained the ingredients, showed us how to activate the yeast and knead the dough after everything was mixed. We then put the dough aside while the yeast did its work to made the volume more than double.
It was then back to pasta making and again we had a demo. This process used two pasta making attachments for the KitchenAid stand mixer, One to roll the dough into translucent sheets and the other to cut the sheets to make tagliatelle. Again Lisa demonstrated the process before we tried it ourselves. It was surprisingly simple, as the sheet got unmanageably long we cut then in two and carried on. Cutting the sheets into multiple ribbons was a very satisfying process, after each pass we hung the pasta on a drying stand.
It was then back for a lesson on making pesto, ragu and creamy salmon sauces. This was followed by instructions on creating a thin crust pizza in an oblong baking sheet and loading it with a pre-prepared tomato sauce, a range of Italian charcuterie and mozzarella cheese. While we went off and did this, the team cooked the pasta and then folded in the sauces. It was time to enjoy the fruits of our labour. The three pasta dishes were all delightful.
As we got to the end of our pasta the pizzas were ready. There was something deeply satisfying about getting our creations out of the oven. Cut into squares we nibbled on our creations and made doubly tasty with the thought that we had made them with our own hands. As we sat eating the food there was a buzz of excitement. We had gone from the point of no knowledge to being honorary Italian chefs in four short hours.
I had really enjoyed this cookery course, the team that looked after us were all enthusiastic, friendly and helpful and the organisation ran like clockwork.
One final treat prepared by Lisa was chocolate pasta in a rich chocolate sauce – As the Italians would say, deliziosa!
There are two more courses planned for this year and a program for 2020 is currently being prepared.
- Truffle Making Workshop – 14th November
- Edible Gifts / Entertaining for Christmas – 12th December
Book online at www.kitchenaid.co.uk
or contact the KitchenAid Experience Store at 98 Wigmore Street, London W1U 3RN
T: 020 7935 2575 / E: londonexperiencestore@kitchenaid.com
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