Despite having cooked and served for several of NGI’s Friday Night Dinners, up until last night I’d never eaten at one. Sure, I’d tried all the components to the various meals when the kitchen crew descended on the leftovers like rabid wolves, but there’s something quite different about being served a gorgeously presented meal created by your peers.

Last night was the dinner for the other half of my class (CTP “Group B”- we were divided alphabetically), and they chose an Italian theme. I loved that the two groups’ themes, presentations and overall food was so different! Their menus were simple and elegant:

As we were seated, each table contained a few little bowls of marinated corignola olives for us to snack on. I loved the red ones most:

And my entire meal was made that much better by the fact that I’d brought a Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA with me. I’ve been searching high and low for this small-batch, 18% ABV beer, and finally discovered them at Whole Foods. I had to ask specifically for it though, and I could only buy two at a time!

The first course was an appetizer trio with roasted delicata squash, arugula salad with orange vinaigrette and delicata seeds, and marinated baby artichokes.

I looooooved the squash. I watched them prepare this yesterday (while I assisted with preparing the artichokes), and cutting several hundred of those rings looked incredibly labor-intensive. They were naturally so sweet that someone actually asked what the sweetener on them was!

The artichoke hearts had a buttery texture and were delicious, too.

And the salad was very simple, which was a good foil to the rest of the meal. Just a pile of lightly-dressed greens- one of the school’s staples, clearly.

For the entree, the group painstakingly assembled an individual lasagna for each of the hundred guests.

It must have been so stressful to plate these, but they turned out beautifully. Each lasagna was composed of spinach pasta, wilded escarole and radicchio, cannelini bean puree, grilled oyster mushrooms, pignoli ricotta and roasted tomatoes fra diavola, topped with basil and capers.

Yum. Even with all the mushrooms, I still adored this. In fact, the sauce and cheese were so delicious that I could barely even detect the ‘shrooms. Good going, guys. On the side, there were also a few stalks of garlicky broccolini, which added some green and upped the veg factor:

And finally, dessert. I’d sampled several of the components during prior tests, and was absolutely stoked for the frozen coconut and amaretto cream, macadamia nut tuile, roasted figs, candied hazelnuts and dark chocolate sauce.

Need. I. Say. More.

The entire plate was fantastic, but my favorite parts were my far the hazelnuts and tuile. And how gorgeous of a job did they do on the tuiles as ice cream cups?!

The good (and bad) part about being friends with the chefs is that they can bring you out extra of everything. At one point there was a pint of ice cream and a measuring cup of ice cream on our table, which we mixed together and went to town on. It was delicious at the time, but truth be told, I wayyyyyyyyyyy overdid it, and paid the price with a serious stomachache that still hasn’t quite gone away this morning. I’ll admit to being frustrated with myself, but I guess that I’d rather overeat a delicious homemade gourmet “health-supportive” dessert than a gallon of Breyer’s.

On a more positive note, I found the entire meal to be incredible, and am so proud of my class for pulling off two beautiful, delicious dinners. If you’re ever in NYC on a Friday evening, I highly recommend making a reservation at the Natural Gourmet Institute for a meal. For $40, you get a unique vegan meal with a BYOB option, and while the setting isn’t quite as ritzy as a trendy restaurant, it’s a neat experience. The Friday Night Dinners are a graded test for each CTP, so they really put their hearts and souls into creating something wonderful for their friends and family.

Now, that’s it!! We’ve got one big test left on Monday, and then it’s smooth sailing with some fun, ethnic-themed cooking classes until the end of the program. Wahoo!

Does anyone have any specific questions or topic they’d like me to address about my time at NGI? I’m planning on putting together a post while I’m home over Thanksgiving and want to know what you want to know!