Cooking Class

Our finished Vegetable Millefoglie!

Today, we had a kind of busy day. We had a tour of the Uffizi Gallery with my favorite tour guide Bernardo, and then headed to a cooking class in Florence, both through my study abroad program. The Uffizi gallery was filled with so many beautiful paintings and was much larger than I had ever expected. This is something I walk past every day and was finally able to visit. Bernardo had so many great explanations of the pictures and their creators. His stories always crack me up!

After our tour, we walked across the river to our cooking class at “In Tavola”, a cooking school that offers lessons to all different types of people (there was a class of older women right after us and it sounded like they met every week. They were having a total hoot!). The menu included Vegetable millefoglie (a yummy eggplant and zucchini dish), Ravioli di Ricota e Spinaci (Spinach and ricotta filled Ravioli), fettuccini with tomato pasta sauce, and of course, tiramisu for dessert.

Step 1: knead the dough into a ball
(dough consists of eggs, flour, and a little bit of salt)

Step 2: Roll out balls of dough with a rolling pin so they are
the right width for the pasta machine. Next, feed the long
strips of dough through the machine until it gets thin and long.

Step 3: squirt a little bit of the spinach/ricotta mixture
about every inch, fold dough over, and cut with a
 noodle/pastry tool for the fun edges.

Step 4: Place ravioli squares in boiling water for about
 four minutes, then place into butter and sage sauce.

We made everything from scratch, including the noodles. Who knew it was so easy? Our chef was pretty intense, but we still had a great time. There was only a minimal amount of stress and tears shed, so not too bad! After we made our meal, we were able to go to the basement of the cooking school and enjoy our food. The basement was decorated in true Tuscany style and was the perfect fit for our day. We had way too much food and it tasted so fresh. It was a really great experience that I was so fortunate to have and will always remember. 

We changed the head on the machine to make fettucini.
It is seriously as easy as it looks! However, I think
all those years of making lefse really paid off! 

Our chef hard at work! He was so funny, but
could have used an anxiety pill or two. 

Tiramisu! Yum!