Mamma Anna & Co. Cookery Class Review
I’ve always wanted to be a good cook. Throwing together something healthy, delicious, and not too expensive in an immaculate apron has always been one of my more PG-Rated fantasies. My cooking reality is more frying a variety of meats and then adding a packet of spice or a jar of sauce to it. More Old El Paso than ElBulli. So I was excited and nervous to take the ‘Premier Night Canapés’ cooking class by Mama Anna. Accompanied by S, a far more talented cook, I headed down to West Kensington with an appetite for learning.
Walking into Mama Annas, we were greeted with big smiles, ciao’s all around, and a wonderfully strong coffee. Now the thing about Mama Annas is that there is no upstairs classroom annex, no backroom where they they teach rows of inept chefs. You are stuck right behind their display counter, in their real kitchen where they make their food. You are in the shop window with nowhere to hide. And just like that, I was handed my spotless apron (fantasy check!), a rolling pin and I got to work. First things first, rolling out the dough for the canapés. Easy enough you would think but while S was rolling sheets of doughy perfection, I was rolling out gloopy monstrosities that resembled nothing more lumps of tired playdoh after a long pre-school class. ‘It doesn’t have to be perfect!’ Mama Anna assured me, a motto she was destined to repeat often for my benefit. Soon we moved on to making open pastries loaded with bacon and ricotta, closed pastries with chunks of broccoli and blue cheese and finally pastry boats filled with apples and cinnamon. And while S floated along, turning out pastry after pastry of perfect proportions, I gamely struggled along with pastries that looked like the ‘before’ photos of a cooking class advert. But with a lot of patience and a few careful prods of her finger, Mama Anna quickly showed that how even my work was salvageable and possibly even delicious. And as always, ‘it doesn’t have to be perfect!’.
This class itself was quite simple, the flour, fillings and toppings are all ready for you in clear plastic bowls, TV-chef style. Mama Anna emphasised that she didn’t want to teach restaurant cooking, she wanted meals and snacks that people could recreate in their own homes. Still, sprinkled throughout were useful tips and tricks. I finally learned how much a ‘pinch’ of ingredient was, I learned what that plastic handle thingy with a metal end was called (a scraper chopper) and how to use it. I learned how to ‘feel’ the correct depth of pastry sheets and I just got good practice in handling dough. With only an hour to play with, such a focused lesson keeps you busy throughout the duration but doesn’t leave you feeling rushed or overwhelmed.
The lesson might have been simple but more than anything I remember how fun and warm the teaching team was and you really got the sense that this is a family operation. First you have the matriarch of the clan, the eponymous Mama Anna, dishing out nuggets of cooking advice gold in her charmingly accented, but always understandable, English. Then you had the son, Fabrizio, who was a tailored Italian suit away from being a walking Lavazza advert, chipping in advice here and there with a toothy grin before swooping in at the end of the lesson to snag a glass of wine. And to top it off, there was Marco, not family but a engaging, bespectacled presence who gave off the impression of a culinary Q. Marco assisted throughout the cooking class and finally led the wine tasting.
The wine, an aromatic Riesling, was delicious and better yet, they didn’t skimp on how much they gave you. Marco chatted about it in a very open, unpretentious manner, but he clearly had an appreciation and knowledge of good wine. While touching on geography, biology and history, he shed light on a variety of wine knowledge like what ‘minerality’ is (the slight sensation of fizz on your tongue), how different wines age differently, and why £4.99 bottle really isn’t worth it.
You get to take home everything you make in the class and later that evening we chowed down on all the canapés we had made. They were delicious and I could barely even tell which ones I had made. I’m not sure I could make make them again without Mama Annas kitchen and advice but even without learning anything, the charm of the teachers, the way they took care of you and made you feel welcome made the experience more than worth it. My food might never be perfect but the cooking classes at Mama Annas certainly are.
Reporter: Ken – @potatotattoo
Website: http://www.mamma-anna.co.uk/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ma_and_co
