Hello there! I promised more news
from Italy, and here I am. Last week, I attended an Italian cooking class on
making pizza, but a couple of weeks ago (even before I started The Nom
Factory), I attended the first class, in which we made a full Tuscan meal. Both
classes were unbelievably fun, but the first class was even better because it
was more hands-on and a little more complex. I took the class with eight girls from
my study abroad program, along with a few other ladies who were visiting Siena.
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| Roasted Pork and Potatoes |
To begin, we made a typical Tuscan soup called Pappa col Pomodoro. Complete with slices
of bread, garlic, basil, tomatoes, wine, and broth, this was a soup that was
simple to make and would definitely warm you up on a cold day. I managed to get some great step-by-step
photos, so hopefully they help you understand how yummy this is.
First you heat the garlic, olive
oil, and basil, then you add thinly sliced day old bread to toast it up and let
it absorb all of the flavors:
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| Crispy, Crunchy, Garlicky Bread |
Once toasted, you add canned tomatoes:
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| Soaking up falvors |
Finally, you add the wine and
broth, and let it cook for a while until the bread breaks down quite a bit and
all of the flavors develop. Doesn’t that look lovely? I’ve also been told you can beat
together some eggs (about one per person) with grated parmesan cheese and stir
the mixture into the hot soup to this dish even heartier.
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| Simmering and Becoming Even More Delicious |
For our next course, we learned to
make homemade Pici pasta with a Sugo di Salsiccia e Porcini, or a Sauce
with Spicy Sausage and Porcini Mushrooms. This was one of my favorite portions of the class because it was the
most hands-on. We started by making the sauce, which consisted of sautéing a
mixture of garlic, parsley, and other herbs, then adding the sausage. After it
had browned we added the tomatoes, wine, porcini mushrooms, and broth, in
stages, and finally let it cook for a couple of hours while we prepared the
rest of our meal. I was especially involved in this process, because I was the
one opening up the sausages, adding all of the ingredients, and stirring the
sauce. As a result, each bite was particularly rewarding.
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| My Individual Portion of Flour (a mix of two types) for the Pici |
As I mentioned, we also made pici, pasta that is like a kind of very
thick spaghetti and is typical in Siena. We each received personal portions of
ingredients, and were granted the opportunity to learn to make pasta under an
experienced eye. After we finished
rolling them out, we popped them in the water, added some sauce and fresh
parmesan, and said “Buon Appetito!”.
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| Finished Pici al Sugo di Saliccia e Porcini |
Throughout the rest of the class we
made Roasted Pork stuffed with Herbs, accompanied by roasted potatoes, and a
Rice Cake with Raisins. I have
less to say about making the pork, because this stage was much less hands-on,
but it was really cool to watch our instructor, a typical little older Italian
lady, skewer the meat with a spit and fill the hole she made with fresh herbs.
Also, the potatoes were cooked perfectly and tastes heavenly after soaking up
the juices from the roasting pork.
The cake was a fun surprise because she let a very short grain rice cook
in hot milk, which it eventually absorbed, and then added flour, sugar,
vanilla, and raisins soaked in Vin Santo,
before pouring the batter in the pan. The resulting cake was light and a bit springy
with a lovely delicate flavor, and a perfect light end to a fantastic marathon meal.
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| Rice Cake with Vin Santo Soaked Raisins and a bit of Chocolate Sauce |
