Cooking with Astro Yogourt at Nella Cucina

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to attend a hands-on cooking experience at Nella Cucina, courtesy of Feishman-Hillard, an international public relations firm. The cooking event featured products by Parmalat’s Astro Yogourt, featuring either recipes from their site or one’s own. At the session I attended, I made three items – chicken curry, rayta for the curry and a very quick tuna salad. I had originally intended to make a fourth dish, but there wasn’t enough time.

Ingredients and supplies all ready for us

Chopping cucumbers for the rayta

Prior to the event, all attendees were all asked what they wanted to make, so that ingredients as well as supplies would be ready for us when we arrived. Attendees, who were mostly bloggers such as The Urban Daddy, Nella Cucina staff members, including a chef, were there to help so that we could get as much done within a two hour or so time slot as we could. This included helping with the actual cooking so attendees can move on to the next dish while things were on the stove.

Chicken curry cooking on the stove!

The rayta in a container ready to serve

I mostly followed the recipes as posted on the Astro website, but (as usual) made some minor changes – especially to the tuna salad. As I am not the biggest mayo fan, I halved the amount and replaced it with additional yogurt. We were given containers as well as a cooler so that we could take our meals home with us. The tuna salad and some of the rayta ended up being my lunch that day as well as the next while the chicken curry was devoured at dinner – though next time, I’d probably add a bit more flavour to it. The recipe as is was a bit bland for my husband and me. A little more spice (though not hot spice) would probably do the trick.

Back home with the tuna salad, seen here with homemade spelt quickbread

The chicken curry dinner, served with tomato cucumber rayta and brown basmati rice

The event was very well-organized and my sense was that everyone had an amazing time. Thanks so much to everyone for organizing and inviting us!

About Cynthia Cheng Mintz

Cynthia Cheng Mintz is the founder and webitor-in-chief of this site and the petite-focused site, Shorty Stories. She has also written for other publications including the Toronto Star and has blogged for The Huffington Post. Her first novel, Aspirations, was published in 2007. Outside of writing, Cynthia researches and advises philanthropic ideas for family funds and foundations and also volunteers.