Buon Appetito!

Friday started off a little rocky since we were all supposed to meet ISA at 9am for a guided tour of the Uffizi, the first museum ever opened.  Anna got up and showered but I was entirely too tired and grumpy to get up so I slept through the museum tour before getting up and getting ready for the cooking class.  While walking to meet my cooking class, I met up with Jen and we walked together to make it to the meeting point just in time.  We followed the ISA staff across the Ponte Vecchio to the strange alley that houses the cooking class.  We walked in an were instructed to hang up our belongings, put on a plastic apron, and wash our hands.  April, Anna, Chelsea, Jenn and I were separated as the class was starting, so Anna and I were asked to go into the back room.  We got insanely lucky since the back room was private, huge, and instructed by the owner.

We started off my making Tiramisu.  Anna and I were instructed to crack and separate the eggs and add them to sugar.  Anna began hand whipping the yolk of the egg into sugar while another girl machine beat the white of the eggs into sugar.  Once the eggs were properly beaten, we added in masacapone cheese (a massive block of cream cheese) to the yolk/sugar and hand beat that again.  Once that was properly mixed, we added both egg/sugar mixes together to create the cream.  Next we all dipped our cut up lady finger cookies into a mixture of brandy and espresso.  With all the ingredients ready, we layered cream and cookies until the little dishes were full and then topped them off with a sprinkling of cocoa powder.  Who would have thought Tiramisu was so simple to make?

Next we moved onto creating our appetizer, Vegetable Millefoglie.  First we washed our vegetables, the zucchini, the eggplant and then we taught how to properly cut and dice them.  The zucchini was cut in half, then 4 times length wise, then the middle (the seeds and light green part basically) were sliced out and thrown away.  Then we chopped the 4 slices into about 2 centimeter slices then turned them the other direction and diced them into teeny pieces.  This process took a while even though all 5 of us were working on it, slicing and dicing was hard work!  Next we took the already pre-boiled potato's and sent them through the masher which transformed them into little noddles of potatoes and added them in with the diced zucchini.  Next we cut up the eggplant into thin yet equal slices and folded the slices of Fontina cheese.  With all of the ingredients prepared, we began to stack everything together.  We first drizzled olive oil into the bottom of the pan, then put a slice of eggplant, a scoop of potato/zucchini mixture, a slice of eggplant, a scoop of mixture, 2 slices of cheese, and then a slice of eggplant all kept together with a tooth pick.  Finally we lightly drizzled everything with olive oil then put it in the oven to bake for 25 minutes.

While the appetizers were cooking we started preparing our pasta!  First we were given a mound of flour and told to create a hole in the center to make it look like a volcano.  Then we were given 2 eggs and cracked them into the center and slowly mixed the eggs into the flour, adding a pinch of salt every so often.  As we mixed, the mixture became less watery and thicker as more flour was incorporated.  When it wasn't runny at all, we began to work the dough with our hands, folding it inward from the outside and sprinkling flour every so often and flipping it over.  Next we wrapped the dough in plastic and let it sit for 30 minutes.  During this time we began creating our sauce, but since it was on the burner, the chef did most of the work and just explained what he was doing.  We also made the filling for our ravioli while we waited which was made out of spinach and ricotta cheese.  I held back during the making of the filling since I'm not a fan of spinach but the other girls sliced and diced the spinach until it was small then mixed it into a bowl with the ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese, an egg, salt, pepper, and ground nutmeg.  The filling was put into a pointed bag and placed in the refrigerator to chill.

The dough came out 30 minutes later a lot softer so we were told to roll the dough into a rectangle then fold it into a burrito and roll it, then fold it in half and roll it and then repeat this process 3 times until you are left with another rectangle.  Once it was properly rolled, we put the dough through the pasta roller.  We put it through the roller several times at different settings making it thinner and thinner until it was about 3 1/2 feet long and pretty thin.  The really long piece was put onto the work station and cut in half.  Since Anna and I's dough was one of the last to be put through the machine we made linguine instead of the ravioli that everyone else had made. The linguine was made by putting a special slicer onto the pasta roller and just grinding it up.  The ravioli was made by laying out the dough and places a small sized squirt of spinach two inches apart and in the center of the dough.  The dough was then rolled in half and lightly pressed all around the spinach to insure it stuck to the pasta.  Next we were given a jagged slicer and cut the edges and then in the center between each blob of spinach until we had neat little squares of ravioli.

The sauce for the ravioli was just butter, olive oil, rosemary, basil, and salt and pepper sauteed.  For the linguine we had a spicy tomato sauce.  The chef mushed up a bunch of tomatoes with his bare hands then then added them, salt, pepper, olive oil, and dry crushed chili peppers into the suace pan to saute for a few minutes.  While the sauces were heating up we cooked the pasta which took all of about 3 minutes.  By the time all of this was done, we gathered up all of our food and headed downstairs where we were surprised to find a full dining room.  We sat down with our fellow cookers and ate our delicious meals.  I was even brave enough to try to eggplant appetizer and ended up LOVING IT! Who would have known I actually liked eggplant?!  I ate a lot of linguine since I'm not a fan of the ravioli and tried the tiramisu we created and the cream was delicious even though I still didn't like the espresso taste.  On the way out we said our goodbyes and were given a little recipe guide so we could make everything again in at home!  We also picked up a pamphlet so we could try to go to the cooking class again, I loved it!

The rest of the day was pretty lazy, I got a few things from the market and watched The Little Mermaid with Anna.  Later we went to Ganzo for dinner where we had to wait for almost 20 minutes since we didn't have a reservation and then when I tried to order, my first 3 choices were already sold out.  Dinner ended up being alright then we headed home to sleep for an early morning in Orvieto!