Pasta Cooking Classes at Junction Food Hall & Drink

I’ve seen the pros make pasta. They take their fingers and deftly squish and mix eggs into a well of flour, then knead and knead until it’s a silky ball. That’s followed by swiftly and repeatedly running it through the pasta machine until sheets of thin pasta dough become strands of fettuccini or whatever shape they are to become. They make it look so easy!

Yet, when I’ve tried it (using the pasta machine a friend gave me after her wedding, saying “no way in hell will I ever make pasta, so here, take it.”), there’s flour everywhere and noodles draped over every flat surface of my kitchen (and then dining room table). By the end, I’m cursing myself for wanting to try this big project. But when the meal is actually made (angel hair with pesto or with clam sauce are my biggest successes), it tastes so darned good. I’m proud of myself and pleased with the end result – until I look back at the mess in kitchen and wonder how I got flour on the ceiling and in my ear. I needed help learning how to make pasta correctly. Enter Junction Food Hall & Drink and their recent pasta making class led by Chef Trusan Comstock, an instructor with CocuSocial which organizes cooking classes.

We arrived at Junction Food Hall a few hours early to finish out our workday, to grab a bite at one of the restaurants, Bowl’d Masala, and fuel up at Sonder Coffee & Tea before the evening class. With our workdays officially over, we took advantage of happy hour deals at Junction Bar (I recommend the Old Fashioned) to loosen us up a bit before the group class.

Chef Trusan had set up his class area at the east end of Junction Food Hall & Drink where there are numerous dining tables. Our group occupied several of them for prep, actual cooking and then eating together.

Most people in our group had never made pasta from scratch before but a couple of us had. The class was half hands-on after Chef Trusan showed us what to do and half demonstration of certain skills like how to hold a knife properly (including how to pass a knife to someone else), how to cut onion, garlic and basil for the marinara-sauce-making that was also part of the class. I’ll share some of the tips I learned below.

It was heartening to see that no one did everything right in the class (we’d have to hate them), nor everything wrong (we’d have to pity them). We were all a mix of getting some things right and some things wrong. I, for instance, hadn’t made a large enough well in my flour and my eggs immediately ran off the side of my cutting board and onto the table. If you’ve dealt with egg whites before, you know they taunt you by escaping your every attempt to wrangle them. It was not a good start to the class for me. Egos need to go out the window during a cooking class. You’re there to learn and have fun.

While the dough rested, we set to work on the marinara sauce which had very simple ingredients. It was just a matter of making sure everything was cut correctly and put in the pot in the right order so nothing burned. While the sauce simmered, we got to work making our actual noodles.

Part of the group shared the two pasta roller/cutter machines that clamped to tables. That is used to first stretch out the dough, then cut the shapes. The other part of the class used rolling pins to flatten and stretch out the dough. We then used some fun hand-tools to free-hand our noodles. You can imagine how that went – some were wide, some were skinny, some started out wide but ended skinny. One cool tool that I’d never seen was a series of sharp circular blades attached to a handle that could accordion out. So, you could make narrow noodles like fettucine width or spread it out to make lasagna noodles.

We all then took turns putting our noodles in cylindrical wire baskets that we lowered into a pot of boiling water. Lifting them out of the water simultaneously drained them so that we could just pour them onto our plates and top them with sauce and a sprinkle of parmesan.

I wish I could tell you that we all sat down to a long family table of perfectly-prepared pasta and sauce. But pretty much all of us had wiggly, wormy, thick noodles that, yes, tasted good but could have benefitted from being pressed out more thinly before cutting into strips. We all had a good laugh and vowed we’d try again at home now that we had the overall idea. Afterall, you can’t really learn how to do things right unless you’ve done them wrong first.

Some things to keep in mind about the Junction Food Hall cooking classes:

• No experience is required for these classes.
• All the equipment and ingredients are provided and they are all easy to find at local markets if you don’t already have them in your home kitchen.
• The class is for adults age 18 and up.
• You work with whomever you came with. It’s totally fine if you come alone though (more pasta for you!)
• Drinks are not included in the ticket price but they are available for purchase onsite at Junction Food + Drink.

Here are some things I came away with from the pasta making class:

1. Practice the French cooking technique of “mis en place” (pronounced mees-on-plahs) before you cook anything. That means, have all of your ingredients ready and in front of you. Even better if you can pre-measure them (you’ll feel like you’re on a cooking show too!)
2. Read through the entire recipe before you begin. Don’t assume that the order of the ingredients listed is the same as the order in which they are added. Understand ahead of time what the process is going to be before you make your first move. #LearnedTheHardWay
3. Use “00” flour for a silkier texture but have semolina flour available for dusting surfaces.
4. Make a large enough well of flour to accommodate the eggs so that they don’t escape while you’re trying to incorporate the flour into them. #LearnedTheHardWaySomemore
5. Don’t skimp on the “resting time” for the pasta dough – it’s key.
6. Roll out the dough thinner than you think you need to – I’ve heard you should be able to read print through it.
7. You’ll know your pasta is done by taste-testing it for texture. Chef Trusan said it shouldn’t be white in the center – that means it’s not cooked all the way through.
8. To avoid tearing up with onion, refrigerate them first because cold onions don’t release as many gasses. And leave some of the root end on while cutting to avoid the release of tear-producing gas.
9. Chiffonade basil leaves by stacking several individual leaves and rolling them like a cigar (or whatever you roll). Then slice the roll to create thin ribbons of herb.

Whether any of us ever try to make fresh pasta and sauce again (we will, for sure), the evening was a fun experience. We came away with new skills, new confidence and a unique way to spend an evening.

In the current session of one-time classes, the dates are: Sundays at 5 pm, May 10 and May 24.  To learn more about Junction Food Hall, visit their website.

-Story and photos by Courtney Drake-McDonough, Publisher & Managing Editor, InGoodTasteDenver.com

Please note, we were hosted for this class to facilitate being able to write about it. But, as is always our policy, our opinions are our own, honest and true, and for the benefit of our readers.