Restaurateur Shares Knowledge

With Local Cooking Class

By Nancy K. Crevier

Angelo Marini, owner of Sal e Pepe Contemporary Italian Bistro on South Main Street, hosted cooking instructor Lorraine Hurley and her three students ion Tuesday afternoon, December 13, for a tour of the restaurant’s two kitchens and a brief lesson on restaurant operations.

Isabella Wakeman, 10, Zach Fuchs, 12, and Evan Ziegler, 10, have been studying cooking skills with Ms Hurley at The Hurley Kitchen, 26 South Main Street in Newtown, for a year and a half. The students meet four to six times each month and have advanced from initial lessons on how to read and prepare recipes to mastering independent recipes and interpreting recipes.

“We work with a lot of seasonal food, and the kids even helped me plant a garden this summer, and then we used the produce in our recipes. It’s good for them to know where food comes from,” said Ms Hurley. The children are also introduced to new foods in the class, learn basic kitchen skills, and some advanced skills. “It is all skills that they will use for a long time,” she said.

The field trip to Sal e Pepe provided the children with the opportunity to learn about how a restaurant functions, and to practice restaurant manners and the proper use of utensils, Ms Hurley said. She was pleased that Mr Marini was open to sharing his profession with the class.

The afternoon began with the four guests seated at a table in the main dining room, where they reviewed manners and utensils, and put in orders for appetizers. Then Mr Marini provided the class with aprons, showing them the classic manner in which chefs tie on their aprons (wrapped around back to front and tied in a bow), and then started them with a tour of the pastry kitchen.

While smaller and colder than the students expected, Mr Marini pointed out the efficiency of the layout, showed them the many desserts and breads produced in that kitchen, and reminded them that when all of the ovens are fired up, it is far from chilly in the little room.

From there, the group moved on to the main prep area and kitchen. The children learned about the dinner service process and the importance of the service staff, who must “anticipate what the customer needs,” Mr Marini told them.

The cooking class observed the gigantic commercial dishwasher, with a capability of washing and sterilizing dishes in just three minutes.

“You have to keep up with the dirty dishes in the restaurant,” cautioned Mr Marini. The restaurant also employs a person whose job is to just wash all of the pots and pans, by hand, he said.

“Remember,” he told them, “for every dish we make, there’s a dirty pot or pan, and it has to be scrubbed clean.”

The class exclaimed over the quantity and size of the pots and pans as they moved through the kitchen, and were introduced to Executive Chef Carlos Pineda and Sous Chef Jason Pineda.

As the children examined the salad and grill stations, Mr Marini described the flow of a meal and reinforced some lessons that they had heard from Ms Hurley: hot food needs to go on warm plates, cold foods need to go on cold plates — and portion control is very important.

“The more organized you are ahead of time, the smoother the dining experience goes for staff and customers,” Mr Marini told the group.

Seated once more at their table and sampling a creamy spinach soup, Isabella reflected on the tour.

“[The kitchen here] is definitely more efficient and has more space, of course, than at home,” she said.

Evan added, “The kitchen [at Sal e Pepe] is cluttered, but it is organized.”

Zach nodded in agreement, but had a final important question for his instructor.

“After we finish dinner,” he asked Ms Hurley, “do we get to have dessert here, too?”