This was a treat Spencer and Abbie had scheduled for us to do as a team. it turned out to be more fun than I could have imagined.
We were told to meet at the taxi stand at the train / bus station. Are you starting to see a theme here. All transportation goes through a central point.
There were about 30 of us signed up for the day of cooking. As soon as they got us organized we took a short walk to the Mercado (central market.)
Izak was the chef who was putting all of this together. Although at this point, we did not know what we were cooking we purchased vegetables…
Cheese…
Meat…
After purchasing all of the supplies we would need we loaded up on a bus and went a few miles out into the countryside to a Tuscan Villa set up specifically for this cooking school. Chef Izak has the black shirt on and introduced us to Carmela, in the white smock, as we arrived. Carmela seemingly can not speak any language but communicates through Dean Martin songs, lots of hand movements and clapping and dancing. The first project was to make some proper bruschetta.
The payoff was we got to start eating immediately and drinking a bit of wine. The best part of this class was that the wine flowed freely and we got to ride a bus back into the city. In Florence there is no penalty for stumbling as you walk.
Interestingly I learned that in Italy the bread and pasta are made without salt. Because of this you need to compensate for the lack of salt in other ways. It is a long story about why no salt but suffice it for me to say at one time in Italy when the cuisine was in it’s infancy salt held the same value as gold.
So we found out one of our projects was a garlic pork roast cooked on the bones. The roasting pan has clearly cooked a few roasts.
We were all given 1/2 cup of flour and 1 egg and given instructions on how to make pasta. We made two kinds of pasta and Abbie is proudly displaying her final product.
After the beef ragu had started cooking in the pot and the garlic pork roast had been put in the oven we started working on tiramisu. Then it was time to start sampling the estate wine.
Carmela has now taken the roast out of the oven, collected all of the pasta and is starting to cook it by type. You might wonder why she is all alone at a group cooking class – the wine was opened in another room.
Here is the presentation of the beef ragu.
Spencer has an empty bottle of wine in front of him, Abbie is joyfully anticipating the pork roast and I am enjoying life.
Enter the garlic pork roast. It tasted even better than it looks.
After several more bottles of wine we had a graduation ceremony. Here is the Diehl Family finally graduating from something with honors.
It was time for our final dinner together so after a long day of cooking, eating and drinking we went to a close by family trattoria for the final meal.
We had spaghetti and clams, spaghetti carbonara and porcini risotto with gnocchi in gorgonzola sauce for us all to sample. Pretty heavy meal but we slept well.
A loving sigh as we all realize this is the last meal together.
Back to the apartment for final packing.