In the kitchen classroom at Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg, it's not just the students who learn from the public evening cooking courses.
Take, for example, the first time Burlington resident Adele Dienno taught her Italian holiday cookie class about 20 years ago, soon after the Access CVU community education program launched in 2001.
"I'm very ambitious. We did eight different cookies that night," Dienno said. "It was so hot in the room that I wanted to rip my clothes off and start naked baking," she added with a chuckle.
Dienno learned that it was better to teach six different cookies over two sessions, as she has since done. On Thursday, December 7, 16 students will make biscotti, amaretti and lacy Florentines. The following Tuesday, Dienno will guide a group through ravioli dolci, pressed pizzelle and sesame cookies.
Unsurprisingly, "Naked Baking" has never made it onto the Access CVU course list, but the menu of about 45 hands-on cooking classes a year includes many other kinds of baking, from cupcakes and apple pie to éclairs and sourdough bread. The culinary program also spans the globe. Current instructors include Vermonters originally from India, Mexico, Eritrea and Vietnam. Others, such as Dienno, share multicultural recipes handed down to them in the U.S.
Each $45 class runs about two hours, with plenty of food to eat or take home. Most are one-offs, but on November 29, eight students gathered with teacher Ruah Swennerfelt for the second of a two-part course on sourdough baking. The group ranged from self-described millennials to boomers.
Many had brought their month-old sourdough starter, created during the first class from flour and water, for Swennerfelt to evaluate. A Charlotte homesteader, she's a first-time instructor.
"Everybody's starter looks good," she said encouragingly, as students examined and sniffed each other's jars. They were filled with a range of cream- or tan-hued, softly bubbling mixtures that had absorbed local microflora and been used — with varying degrees of reported success — to create naturally fermented bread and other baked goods between the two sessions.
During the November 29 class, students divided into three groups to bake with sourdough discard, the term for what is pulled from the jar to make space for more flour, which feeds the starter to keep it active. One pair made dried-sour-cherry scones. A trio worked on a blueberry breakfast bread, and the remaining group mixed and portioned ricotta cookies before baking and glazing them with a bright lime icing.
While the classroom filled with mouthwatering baking smells, Swennerfelt helped troubleshoot issues that students had experienced with their homemade loaves. They also shared how they had used the discard at home, including in pancakes, scones, waffles and chocolate chip cookies.
Swennerfelt was impressed. "I'm learning from you all today, too," she said.
Deb Koss of Hinesburg said she had been looking forward to re-creating the tangy sourdough for which her San Francisco hometown is renowned. But "my bread was a failure," she lamented, showing a photo of a fairly dense loaf that had not risen much.
Her tablemate, South Burlington resident Bev Vallee, had been even more discouraged and thrown out her starter. Swennerfelt concluded that Vallee likely keeps her home too cool for ideal starter incubation and recommended she find the warmest spot in the house. "It's an alive, exacting thing to work with," Swennerfelt acknowledged.
After everyone sampled freshly baked fluffy scones, moist blueberry bread and tender cookies, Christel Menzer of Hinesburg offered Vallee her starter to take home. "Now I feel hopeful again," Vallee said.
The following evening, the teaching kitchen smelled equally delicious but very different.
Soon after class started at 6 p.m. on November 30, 13 students were busily mixing masa harina with water and salt to make gorditas under the tutelage of Magdalena Deloya. It was the second class taught by the native of Guerrero, Mexico, who lives in Warren and works as an interpreter.
Unlike some fellow students, Jeremy Streeter said he grew up in California and was familiar with the thick version of a tortilla that is split and usually served stuffed with meat or beans plus toppings. As he patted the dough into rounds, the Essex resident said he's taken at least half a dozen Access CVU cooking classes over the past few years, including sessions on pies and German spaetzle.
"I like to cook," Streeter said. "This is my kind of tourism. I travel for food."
Deloya said she welcomed the chance to share her culture and food. "I wanted to teach something that is authentic and the recipes that are from my family," she said.
To go with the gorditas, Deloya demonstrated how to make a green salsa with boiled tomatillos, jalapeños, onion, garlic and optional cilantro. She also mixed shredded chicken with a light puréed tomato sauce and reheated black beans with a little almost-charred onion.
"That is how my grandmother, my mother and my father always did it," Deloya explained to the group. "The onion gives it a special flavor."
The class that night included two couples and a pair of friends. Some had come solo and were making friends around the four large worktables and corresponding stoves. They hailed from eight Chittenden County towns, plus one in Addison County.
A number were first-time Access CVU cooking class participants, although a few had taken other courses, such as basket weaving and pottery. The community education program offers some 400 classes October through May.
Several students, such as Lausanne Allen of South Starksboro and Fran Cohen of Burlington, had enrolled because they had fallen in love with gorditas when living or traveling outside of Vermont. They wanted to learn to make the dish, since it's not regularly available locally.
Friends Pat Matton of Charlotte and Robyn Davis of Ferrisburgh found the class because they were looking for a fun activity to do together. Matton added that she was drawn to the idea of learning from an instructor with a direct link to the cuisine.
Program manager Jen Morton said Access CVU strives to offer a variety of cooking classes and that Mexican cuisine is the most recent addition. That's because of connections made with potential instructors through Viva el Sabor, an Addison County-based culinary collective.
Access CVU also provides the rare opportunity to learn from a James Beard Award semifinalist. Alganesh Michael, chef-owner of the South Burlington-based A Taste of Abyssinia catering company, earned a nod this year in the prestigious Best Chef: Northeast category. Michael, who offers weekly takeout Eritrean and Ethiopian meals from the Mill Market & Deli in South Burlington, has taught regularly with Access CVU for about eight years. She also offers private classes and has taught at Richmond Community Kitchen.
Through her catering and teaching, Michael shares the food of her native Eritrea, which is similar to Ethiopian cuisine but less common in the U.S. It features injera, a soft, springy, fermented flatbread used to scoop up curried lentils and vegetable and meat stews.
At the end of her classes, Michael noted, everyone sits down to eat and she has a chance to talk about Eritrea. "We eat with our hands, but there is etiquette with that," she explained. "It's not just about the food. It's about learning about the culture, what the food means for our culture."
Similarly, Access CVU instructor Delna Khambatta, of Williston-based Delna's Kitchen, appreciates the opportunity to introduce Vermonters to a broad range of recipes from India. In addition to teaching with Access CVU and for some other venues, Khambatta produces a line of frozen Indian meals that are sold through independent grocers and co-ops in Vermont. She also does occasional takeout pop-ups.
The contest-winning recipe developer grew up in the state of Gujarat in western India and has Parsi heritage. Khambatta teaches some northern Indian cuisine, which is the most familiar to many Americans, but she goes beyond that. Her classes include South Indian dishes such as a coconut-based chicken curry from the Chettinad region of Tamil Nadu; traditional Parsi dishes such as khichdi, a rice and lentil pilaf; and the Gujarati flatbread called thepla.
Khambatta said she recognizes that Indian cooking can be intimidating with its many steps and spices, so she provides shortcuts and substitutions. "I want to simplify and take out the fear," she said.
Carolyn Siccama of Williston said she has taken at least one CVU Access cooking class most years since 2015, sometimes with family members. "I always love to find new recipes and things to cook for my family," she said.
During a fall class with Khambatta, Siccama and her husband learned to make dal palak, which she described as a "quick, easy and delicious" dish of spiced lentils and spinach. "We've made that maybe eight times since," Siccama said.
Streeter, the cooking program regular who was in the gordita class, opined that the course fee compares favorably with going out to eat — with a bonus.
"There's food at the end," he said, "and here you're learning at the same time."