Everyone gets to make their own cocktail. Here, the beetrita.
Looking for something to do on a winter night when the Hamptons are empty and it’s cold and you’re kind of hungry and you want to be treated like a special snowflake? Take a cooking class at Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton. The class starts upstairs, where you make your own cocktail and continues downstairs in the kitchen. Take your cocktail with you while you get thoughtful and thorough instructions from chef du cuisine Kyle Koenig and pastry chef Cassandra Shupp. Be prepared to put on an apron, form some pasta and not be handed a knife. Then, go upstairs and sit down and eat in front of the fire while with your new friends.
Chef Kyle Koenig shows off his method of roasting squash.
On the night I went, the theme was purées, but the meal was not for those without teeth. Bartender Andrew Borgia had set up everyone with a place at the bar where they could make the restaurant’s beetrita, a cocktail with silver tequila, lime juice, beet juice and agave syrup.
Forming butternut squash agnolotti.
Koenig taught us the basics of making pasta with a butternut squash filling and the secret to making the potato purée often found on plates in fine dining restaurants. Shupp walked us through and let us handle a pastry bag to make a cranberry panna cotta crumble.
Topping Rose Pastry Chef Cassandra Shupp shows off her cranberry panna cotta crumble.
The classes are being held once a month on Wednesdays; the next is Feb. 18. Cost is $175 and includes a three-course dinner with cocktails and wine. Everyone goes home with the recipes.
