Interactive Italian Cooking Classes at Durbanville Hills

Learn how to serve up cuisine ‘Just like Mama makes!’

Durbanville Hills Cellar in collaboration with food expert Maryke Josling, or The Little Pink Chef, invites you to join them in the Olive Grove area of their dining establishment at 6:30pm on Tuesday, 27 June 2017 for a cooking session. Learn some of the secrets of making authentico italiano dishes that will have your dinner guests from Italy (and anyone who’s a purist when it comes to Italian food) genuinely impressed (or at least that’s the aim). There’s few things quite like a rich and creamy Alfredo pasta or ravioli stuffed with a real bolognese sauce and sprinkled with parmesan to comfort and warm you too, so these are useful skills to have for your own enjoyment later on! This especially during the winter here in Cape Town, which has suddenly become convincingly cold and akin to an actual winter.

The Olive Grove, where you will be learning the mastery of this European cuisine from Maryke, is right next to the tasting room at Durbanville Hills winery. This is no coincidence - as you arrive, you will be greeted with a glass of grape and treated to a tutored tasting of their own wine labels before the class even begins. From there, it’s off to the cooking stations to start whipping up primo cibo (top-notch food!).

As you’re wanting to prove yourself to the purists, this class is going to be all about making dishes from scratch - yes, even the pasta! Pasta-making is, as anyone who has attempted it before knows, tricky to say the least, to the point where it is known as an art. Here you will learn from a beginner’s point of view how to start performing this art yourself, and techniques taught by Maryke that you can use to help you perfect it even long after the evening.

Maryke has more than 12 years of experience working in her field, making her a heavyweight, and has travelled and cooked all over the globe. Since 2009 when she started The Little Pink Chef, she has been passing on her enviable skills through classes. The cooking studio has grown to teach an incredible number of over 2000 aspiring chefs and cooks every year, and the classes range in variety.

This is something of a unique cooking class because it goes the extra mile and involves teaching guests how to pair food with the ideal wines. Wine and food pairing has become a noticeable trend lately in our Mother City and is a favourite amongst foodies and, well, anyone with a tasting palate who tries it. However, it seems to be something reserved for doing at five-star eateries, and it seems that the skills involved to actually curate such a thing are secrets kept from the general populace by restaurant chefs. It certainly sounds like a satisfying thing to be able to walk away with the knowledge of how to create pairing menus of your very own.

These classes are a recent arrival at the winery, so as a guest you’re going to be among the first to experience them. Durbanville Hills sits pretty by the Tygerberg Hills, 20 minutes out of Cape Town’s CBD, and from it you can gaze upon the sights of Table Mountain, Robben Island and Table Bay, as well as the gorgeous vineyards. This winery prides itself on its grape juices and the ways that their tastes are shaped by specific terroir and climate of the area. It’s more than worth a visit just to view the abundance of beauty here and sample the vino.

BOOKINGS FOR THE 2017 ITALIAN COOKING CLASS AT DURBANVILLE HILLS

If you’d like to be a part of this new venture of the winery’s and become your own favourite chef, you can make a booking to secure your place. You can do this by giving Simone Koen a call on +27 (0)21 558 1300 or sending an email to her via skoen@durbanvillehills.co.za.

This night comes at the cost of R495p/p. A maximum of 18 participants can get a slot so grab yours as soon as you can.

Please feel free to also get in touch with Simone through the same mobile number and email address if you would like any further information.

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