Essential Wines of Napa & Sonoma

Whether you're making a casual dinner or a gourmet multicourse meal. We'll cover techniques including poaching, sautéing, grilling and cooking risotto. Using your newly acquired skills, we'll make and dine on a complete meal of: grilled vegetable gratin; mushroom risotto; pan-seared steak with compound butter and mesclun salad with Dijon vinaigrette.

These dishes capture the flavors and techniques of so many exciting, flavor-forward global cuisines. Spanning the gamut from Mexico to the Middle East, these small but satisfying plates are perfect for parties --- or collect them all to make a masterful (and entirely vegan) meal. We'll create and then feast on: Egyptian baba ghanoush and hummus; Argentinian hearts of palm, tomato and avocado salad; Italian roasted cauliflower with capers; and Balinese chili-grilled tempeh skewers.

By the latter half of the 19th century, bistros were centers of social life in Paris, catering to great painters, writers, musicians and other artists. The simple, down-to-earth food served at such bistros quickly became as celebrated as the eateries' most famous patrons - and it's still celebrated in Paris and around the world today. You will make traditional dishes of that bygone era, such as: steak tartare; frisée salad with apples, lardons and goat cheese in a warm shallot-bacon vinaigrette; moules frites and haricot verts amandine.

Let's eat like we're in Italy, from the apps all the way through to a rich dessert! These dishes put you back in that Mediterranean mindset...even if you've never been there. Make and sit down to this warm, comforting Italian banquet of: fried zucchini with Parmesan; veal saltimbocca alla romana; spaghetti carbonara; cavolfiore alla napoletana (cauliflower with raisins and pine nuts).