If you happened to walk into the Williams-Sonoma on 59th street in Midtown Manhattan last Saturday, you might have noticed a faint smell of lasagna. Which, frankly, would have been weird considering this is a cooking store and not a restaurant. Looking towards the back of the store, however, you would have then noticed a crowd of people gathering around a small Italian woman in an apron. Smell of lasagna and a small Italian woman in an apron? Coincidence? Probably not.
That small Italian lady’s name is Ivana Guintoli and she is a private chef that occasionally teams up with La Cucina Magazine to do cooking demonstrations. Besides making a mean lasagna and a rice cake (both recipes linked to below), she also is great at explaining how to make a mean lasagna and a rice cake. It’s for this reason, she is the main instructor in a new series of events brought to you by La Cucina Italiana Magazine. This last event featured the “Easter and Spring traditions of Italy”. (By traditions, of course, they really mean traditional recipes. No solemn religious processions with old ladies carrying olive branches while sobbing around the inside of the store, as far as I could see) and had an additional sponsor in the form of KitchenAid and their mixer that helped play a pivotal role in making the pasta and mixing the rice cake ingredients.
If you’d like to come see the next one, Ivana will be in the Williams-Sonoma on 59th St. between Park Ave and Lexington Ave doing a new lesson once a month. Check back here for when the April event will be.
For the recipes, head to La Cucina’s site below:
Word of warning, if you have small children, they MAY get slightly bored… like this young lady…
David is the resident nerd around these parts. Running a popular tech blog (TheUnlockr.com) for the past 6 years, he’s taken his over-analytical mind and made the transition to food.
