It's Tuesday evening, and Grace Pilato's ten-member Advanced Italian Cooking Class has assembled around the dining room table in the downstairs of the two-story house with the stone wall, 524 S. Allen St.

At 5:30 p.m. it's time to start. Pilato, an energetic culinary enthusiast, wears a white apron with rolled up white long sleeves as she presides over her group.

For the past 14 years, Pilato has been teaching several five-week cooking courses in her home. For $190 (plus the labor of cooking the meal) her students learn a variety of techniques in Italian food.

"Let's do this in an orderly fashion," she says as everyone talks at once.

Printouts from the previous week's session go around the table. Pilato divides her class into teams of twos and threes to work on each of the four courses.

"Tonight we have fresh pasta sheets, whole turkey breasts, and maybe we'll do a puff pastry," she says.

Other ingredients abound, including marinated mushrooms (they're "to die for") fresh dough, spices and an assortment of vegetables.

The groups adjourn to the main kitchen and an adjoining room. Immediately, everything is happening at once.

Pilato pawns ingredients from the refrigerator like an auctioneer at the marketplace.

In the same room, the entrée team of Mark Badger, Sharon Miller and Diana González pound the turkey, which they plan to stuff with two types of filling: one sweet and one savory. Chopping, peeling, slicing and sautéing commences.

In the kitchen, even more action is stirring.

The large central room is claimed as the territory of the pasta team. The wooden table that anchors the room is strewn with goodies.

Pots, pans and cooking utensils -- both ornamental and functional -- hang all around the room and peek out of some of the wooden cabinets. There are jars of oils, wooden spoons and silver knives everywhere.

Bob Hoffman, Lisa Hahn and Danelle Del Corso prepare the pasta dish. While boiling the sheets of pasta in oil, sage butter begins to bubble on the stove and acorn squash puree warms in the microwave.

"Good cooking is the best form of chemistry because you can eat your product," says Badger, her partner in main course preparation, a chemist at Penn State.

The turkey is divided into either sweet or savory types. Apricots, currants, sultanas and walnuts are encased in one style. The other is stuffed with provolone and prosciutto.

"If you want color, you have to think in terms of color," Pilato reminds her class.

Clearly, she has done so with every detail including the preparation bowls, which hold the ingredients. Blue: squash. Red: chopped nuts.

Meanwhile, Badger mixes up some herb polenta, adding basil and thyme.

"If you're lucky Maurice, maybe I'll throw in some prune," Badger teases the elderly man in the pink-and-white candy cane colored apron.

In the class, lessons are learned through doing. Don't put lemon in the spinach because of its acidity. The upward motion required to make puff pastry puff up.

At 7:30 p.m., the dessert is nearing completion. Quietly working in the foyer, Elliot cuts the sponge cake into heart and circle shapes using cookie cutters.

With Pilato's help they both pat the plates so the raspberry sauce spreads into even puddles. The two use a pastry bag to apply dollops of pink cream to make sandwiches out of the hearts. Elliot dots the plates with chocolate and drips chocolate over the oval cutouts. They look like chocolate tires.

In the dining room, the pasta sheets have been boiled, stuffed, and are in the oven. The kitchen is at least 10 degrees warmer as the group heads to the dining room at 8:17 p.m. to sit down.

Del Corso toasts to health, wealth and all the hard work that everyone has been stressed about.

"Bon Apetito," a chorus of voices punctuates her toast.

After each dish there is a one-minute period of silence to ponder the food's impact on the palette, which helps to instill the Pilato's ideal to "wait, don't rush."

Still, Lezzer and Hahn, father and daughter taking their second class together, quickly make the puff pastry disappear. In moments, there is not a scrap left on anyone's plate.

Next, the teal plates of pinwheel-sliced pasta circulate.

One layer is acorn squash. One layer is spinach with sage butter, olive oil, cheese and topped with a hazelnut puree.

"I think this is out of this world," Pilato says after the customary pause.

Everyone claps.

When conversation is too loud, Pilato taps her glass to settle things down.

Plates are gathered up. Again, barely any extra remains. Anyone who leaves leftovers is chided.

The main course is two types of diagonally sliced cross sections of pan-fried and oven-finished stuffed turkey. The loops of turkey sit atop a mound of polenta and are encircled by grape-tomato slices.

"The prosciutto is like butter in your mouth," Pilato says.

A tenor belts out notes in Italian in the background through the speakers.

"He's singing, 'Now that I'm about to die, never has life been so sweet," Guy Pilato says. He has joined the crowd late to partake of the spoils.

"I've learned not to eat all day today," Hoffman says. "I am so full."

Still he and everyone else are able to push on to the dessert. The lemon sponge cake with ricotta cloud cream over raspberry preserves lemon whipping cream is airy, delicate and ornate.

"Perfecto," Pilato says.