Cooking in Tuscany

Having rested the previous day, we woke up excited the next day to go to our cooking class that we had booked.  Noa, her sister and I were going, and it was advertised to be a whole day affair.  Noa found the class by googling online, and by the description we were sold.

!!—Beware.  please eat before seeing this post. —!!

So that morning, we took the car up to Cortona to meet in the square there in order to meet the group and our host.  We meet up around 9 am, and sat down at a little coffee shop to have espresso’s and tea. In total there were 8 of us taking the class together.  We met our cooking instructor, Alessandra, and she started telling us about herself, asking about us, telling us what we could expect from the day and laying out the menu.

At this point we got the first magical quote from Alessandra.  “When life gives you lemons, make limoncello.  lemonade is for losers.”

Cortona

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So then she took us to all the good places in Cortona to get food, basically shopping for the upcoming meal of the day we would be cooking.

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Fresh Pecorino.

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apparently here is the hierarchy of cheese.  another great quote.  if you have rooms for cows, you raise cows and have cow cheese.  if theres no room for cows, you raise sheep and have sheep’s cheese.(pecorino)  If theres no room for sheep, you raise goats and have goat cheese.  Those things will eat anything.

a nice wall i saw

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then we got to alessandra’s house, where we were to cook in her very nice kitchen.

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The first thing we got were aprons, and then we all went to work.  First off is making the pasta.  not a new experience for us, but we were making raviolis, which we have done before, but they were not the nicest looking ones.  so learning how to properly make them was great.

making the dough

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after that was done, it was onto one of the antipasti’s.  tomato’s with filled herbs, slow roasted.

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then me and another fellow decided it was time for the wine to flow.  why wait for lunch.

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this was a crucial step.  sifting the ricotta makes it smoother in the raviolis we were going to be making.

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Then it was time to roll out the pasta

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and fill them with a mixture of the sifted ricotta, parmesan and some herbs

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this was the part noa was very excited about how to do properly

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after cutting them out, everyone got a chance to try to make some

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Then we made the last antipasti – thinly sliced apples layered with thinly sliced pecorino, drizzled in heated honey and sprinkled with chilli peppers.  A-Mazing.

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and the table set and laid out.  along with the apple/cheese there was prosciutto, melon, and some amazing chilli jelly with slices of grana padano

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so we sat and ate the antipasti finally around 2:30 i think.  we had it with more wine of course, and great conversation.

then after sitting and relaxing for a bit, back into the kitchen to cook the ravioli for Primi.  we topped it with my favourite spice, Sichuan peppercorns.  good stuff.

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after that, more relaxing and drinking while we wait for the main course, secondi.

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Secondi consisted of a tenderloin slow roasted in herbs, and borlotti beans cooked in tomato puree. at this point i wasnt so much on the paying attention of how the beans were made.

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then another rest, and some photos of her cats

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and then limoncello

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and then dessert.  strawberries soaked in sugar and lemon with a chocolate lava cake.

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by this point it was around 6:30 or so, and we continued to talk.  people started to slowly leave, and we hung out for a little bit longer finishing to make some pasta noodles with the left over dough.  i think we left around 8, after a wonderful day of cooking.  looking back, i think this is one of our fondest memories of this italy trip.  whenever we cook anything italian from now on, we will always remember advice we got from Alessandra about this or that.

the last quote i will leave you with that we learned, is about when I asked about the local pizza in tuscany and rome. First I asked for a pizza dough recipe, which she told me she does not make.  she goes out to eat pizza.  fair enough!   and being from napoli, Alessandra informed us that eating a pizza here was like eating “a cracker with tomato sauce”.  having eaten a late night local pizza the previous night, i couldn’t agree more.