Cooking Lessons in Italy

Andrea mixing the fresh ricotta fillingFabio’s best friend, Andrea, owns a self-service restaurant in Civitanova Marche called Sandwich Time. It’s a pretty cute little place with a nice selection of fresh and traditional Italian dishes. I admit I’m a little wary of self-service places in Italy after a particularly nasty bout with foodborne illness last year in Rome, but Andrea’s place is legit – I think your worst issue would be gaining too much weight from eating the divine tortellini.

Demonstrating how to roll out the doughHe occasionally holds cooking lessons at a restaurant store in Porto Sant’ Elpidio and he was nice enough to invite me to one on Thursday night. I wasn’t really sure what to expect – and my grasp of Italian is still fairly limited – but I was up for the challenge.

Rolling out the dough for my tartWe arrived a few minutes late, what with our already crazy day on Thursday. The class was just starting to roll out some prepared puff pastry for a savory, ricotta-filled tart. Andrea demonstrated what he wanted us to do with his own piece of pastry, offering a dialogue along the way. Even without being able to understand about half of what he said it was still fairly obvious what was going on – there’s only so many ways to make a puff pastry tart.

Making my tart - and the olive oil guy lurking behind usWe started by rolling out the dough, layering either Prosciutto Cotto (fresh ham), Prociutto (cured ham), or cured salmon along the dough. Then we topped it with a mixture of fresh ricotta, zucchini, mushrooms, eggplant, and bell peppers. One tool that I did really like, and will consider adding to my kitchen, was this little pastry cutter roller thing that slices little separations into the dough so you can stretch it out over the top of the filling.

Pastry roller thingy on the tableIt’s so much easier than attempting to hand-build a lattice top or any number of other techniques for covering a filling. Just zip it over the dough, gently separate, and cover. The only downside is that I might be tempted to make too many pastries and end up as big as a house.

My tart before cookingBrushing the pastry with a beaten eggAfter making the tart a gentleman delivered a rather long-winded talk about olive oil – how the olives are grown, terroir, the processing of the olive oil, the difference between chemically processed oil and cold-pressed oil, etc. I didn’t understand about 99% of it, but judging from the rather pained looks of my fellow lesson-takers, I wasn’t really missing out on much.

Lovely, golden-brown tartsI think Andrea was waiting for him to stop talking before moving on to preparing the next dishes, but he just kept going, so Andrea began cooking again while he was talkingTaking out the steamed artichokesThe commandant of the carabinieri (military police) mixing ricotta filling. He showed us how to make artichokes in a traditional Roman style. Italy has it’s very own artichoke that is exceedingly tender and completely without the furry center present in California-grown artichokes in the US. I definitely want to try my hand at making these before I go home. He peeled off the tough outer leaves of the artichokes, soaked them in a lemon water, separated the inside leaves a bit, seasoned them with salt, and then filled them with an herb oil. The herb oil contained marjoram, a pinch of mint, garlic, salt, and a nice extra virgin olive oil. After that he placed them cut side down in a large pot and seared them for a  few minutes. He then added some of the lemon water, covered the pot, and let them steam for about 15 minutes.

Roman-style artichokes

When they came out they were tender, just slightly acidic, and filled with this amazing herby flavor. Totally delicious.

Cured SalmonSalmon crudite

He also prepared a cured salmon dish. I guess the process they used was to mix one part sugar and one part salt, rub it all over the salmon, and then let it sit for two days. I know there were other steps involved, but it was hard to understand the process without speaking Italian – and it’s something I’ve never done myself. Some people used the salmon pieces as the base for their ricotta tart. Andrea used more of it to create this dish with an aioli-type sauce, croutons, and some fresh greens. I didn’t catch what was in the sauce, but it was delicious. A great interplay of salty, sweet, acidic, and just a touch fishy – yum.

We had some wine and a few desserts traditional for Carnevale (which is being celebrated as I write this), though we didn’t see them prepared, and didn’t end up getting home until after 11:30pm.

All in all, a pretty amazing experience. I really enjoy taking cooking classes and it was refreshing to see one in a new country – and to discover not all Italians are master chefs and need cooking classes too!

Also, a big thanks to Maria Carla - my expert photographer while I participated in the class!

Comments

[A bird in the kitchen's MiL]

These photos and your narrative make me feel like I was there! I wish I was. It looks like amazing fun! WOW!

[Natalie]

Looks delightful, and you can never learn too much about olive oil! Your tart looks downright professional. Great job!