Pasta with Zucchini and my second Cooking Class

It never happens but when it does it is in the worst moment possible. How often have we said these words with a cursing tone toward the stars (or the municipal house).
I have been living in Germany for roughly 7 years now and can still count on the tip of my fingers the times that transports have gone on strike, actually I think they are quite under 5 in total and yesterday was one of these.

Cooking classes and my Tomato sauce

March is starting to look like a pretty busy month. Long time has passed since I had so many deadlines and possibilities to earn some money.
Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I have started giving cooking classes in my town, Bonn. It took some time for the city (represented by the Volkshochschule) to realize the need of offering public classes in English but once they started I was right there to offer my contribution.
Nothing better than some tasty Sicilian food, right? So I decided to offer two classes delving on Sicilian cuisine (one of them for vegetarians) and so far the answer has been excellent!

PaperChef 54 with a magic quartet

Zucchini, raspberries, beans and cereals; these are the actors of today' show.
As every first weekend of each month, it is PaperChef time! If you remember I have already taken part to this creative challenge, quite a few months back. Voids of memory and travels have impeded me to rejoin the happy crew for the monthly ride.
Miraculously this month I remembered of it and checked the dedicated blog  even before the host and ingredients were disclosed; I told you it had something of a miracle, no?
This month host is Karen of Prospect the Pantry and she is the responsible for the weird combination of toys I had in front of me. To be honest, fate is the responsible but, have you read of the power of thoughts on stochastic event? if not, it is a pretty cool scientific/philosophical topic to delve into. Anyhow, the whole ingredients list (Zucchini, raspberries, beans and cereals) didn't look so strange if it wasn't for the raspberries.

Fresh, zingy richness in a clear glass

The four Velveteers are back! After our Red-Velvet cakes we come back to you with a new adventure into our fridges, grocery stores and creative minds.
This time it took us quite a few emails before we could agree on what to propose you. At the end we settled for a Verrine.
What is that?? You might say; that is simply a layered dish prepared into a transparent glass so to admire the alternation of its colors and textures and entice our tasting experience. To make the challenge more interesting we decided to propose each an ingredient to keep secret till the day when they were disclosed all together to the others. Aparna required us to include a cheese of any kind, Asha went for zucchini or squash, Pam chose salmon and I threw in chocolate (yeah I know, I like to make things difficult).

So, let’s see what we have on hands. Zucchini have two major qualities to them: they have a lovely crunchy bite when raw and they get sweet when cooked long enough. To make the things even, I decided to use them two ways: creamy and crunchy.
As salmon I chose to use the smoked one and it is mainly salty, rich and meaty.
The flavors did work for me from the starting; the tricky part was in choosing a proper cheese that will stand out balancing the saltiness of the salmon and the sweetness of the zucchini. At the end, I chose to use Gorgonzola with its saltiness and slight bitterness.
Chocolate was naturally to be dark for me but… when pondering on the juxtaposition of the different layers, the possibility to use milk chocolate came around.

To link the various components I had my spice rack on hand.
All this thinking and pondering brought to life my:

Smoked salmon verrine with zucchini-duo, a Gorgonzola mornay sauce and peppery chocolate shards.