Travel off the Eaten Path

Tina was absolutely delightful. Her English is excellent and she has a relaxed and friendly manner that allowed for a flowing conversation while still giving careful and attentive cooking instructions. She accurately judged the pliability of my dough just by seeing how it hung when I held it up to the camera. I never felt like I was cooking alone.

What a wonderful experience to travel virtually and immerse yourself in your hosts's culture through history, connection, hands-on learning, cooking, and eating!

Our family joined Tina online to make Georgian dumplings one early Saturday morning. Making dumplings takes time. It requires proper kneading and patience and waiting for the dough to be the right consistency to achieve dumpling perfection. But the two hours flew by. Ultimately the dumpling instructions were easy to follow and our dumplings were in fact delicious...we also made friends whom we hope to meet in person one day.

We have very different eaters at our house, some more adventurous than others. But we finally found common ground: Soutzoukakia. We really enjoyed our class, and we LOVED eating the results! We had a great time learning to make soutzoukakia, and we also made a delicious eggplant dish, topped with lots of Greek feta. We learned a lot, the ingredients were easy to find, and we are ready to take another class with Fotini in her kitchen!

I made the most amazing cocktail and Nick made it very simple and took all the mystery out of it! He was so helpful with substitutions and ideas to tailor the cocktail to each of the participants! I loved that it was a small enough group that allowed me to ask questions and he could follow along with what each of us was doing.

When I saw this class on Traveling Spoon I went out and bought a tagine and registered right away. I visited Morocco over 50 years ago but never thought about cooking back then. Morocco is high on my list of places to visit (revisit) after Covid-19 is over. A big reason is for the food. So this class was already going to be good as I read through the descriptions and recipes...The proof is in the eating and these two dishes will make it onto the 'make again' list for sure.

Ally does a great job breaking everything down and keeping it simple!  Making sourdough starter is not easy and Ally stayed in daily contact with me to make sure I was on the right track.

My daughter and I really enjoyed Chamsi's class. She did an excellent job with any questions.

I had fun cooking paella with Juan, he gave many tips for and history of paella, and and we had a lovely conversation while cooking. I look forward to mastering the art of paella! Thanks Juan!

This was a fun and useful class. Nick was very informative and not at all pretentious -- at least two of his participants (including me) were mixing their cocktails in a Mason jar! Not only did I learn how to make "a" cocktail, I learned the template for making multiple versions of a "sour". And making clear ice was not something I ever thought I needed to do -- and now I will.