Sushi Making with Linda Tay Esposito & Kitchit

Right before this event, I was terrified. I was about to let a professional chef into my kitchen. What would they think?

Let me take a step back for a moment. Soon after Jules and I moved out to the west coast, we decided to schedule a Kitchit event. I had originally heard about them through Klout, and while my Klout code expired due to me forgetting, we were able to swing a discount code. So, after asking Kitchit for recommendations (yup, you can do that) for a sushi making class, we chose our chef Linda Tay Esposito.

Linda runs the food blog Flavor Explosions. She is an avid blogger and food photographer as well which was great as I was running around taking a ton of pictures. Her recipes are on her blog as well, so if anything I mention sounds good (it should), feel free to book her/download a recipe/take a class of hers.

Booking months in advance had a couple perks. First, it was paid for before I lost my job. Secondly, we had plenty of time to work out a menu. We ended up having:

• Uramaki inside out rolls (tuna)
• Fancy maki (crab sticks/salmon/tuna/yellowtail)
• Truffled salmon
• Tuna tartare
• Miso soup
• Dofu (bean curd dessert with ginger simple syrup)

Does that sound amazing? It was.

After she finished unpacking her ingredients and a couple of tools, we got to work preparing our dinner. It was very cool to learn how to prepare sushi alongside a chef in an intimate setting with Jules. Our first time trying to do sushi on our own was met with difficulties so it was great to see where we went wrong the first time. Linda is a great teacher and she made sure we understood what we were doing (and why) every step of the way.

Parts of the class were easier than others- it’s safe to say my hand rolls and rolling skills still need work. Learning how to make Miso soup from scratch, different types of truffle oils you can use, and making the tuna tartare was some of the highlights of the evening (for me). However, everything we made tasted amazing!

While it was a bit intimidating to have a professional chef in our (new apartment) kitchen, it’s great to say that our kitchen didn’t cause any issues with preparing our wonderful meal. We learned a ton and ended up having a ton of food to eat- we were quite stuffed at the end of the night!

Overall, our experience with Linda and Kitchit was top-notch. I can’t wait to work with both in the future. (New York friends- Kitchit is available in the city as well!) If you have a chance, I strongly recommend trying them out.