March 28, 2019

With Pastry Week behind us, after making our pasta sfoglia on Friday afternoon (see the prior post), we got together for a pizza party.  This was a no-pressure pizza party… no competition, no judging… we just made and ate pizza and had wine and beer.  Well, there might have been a little bit of bourbon beforehand but if there was, I’m not telling, or I don’t remember, or something…

About pizza parties:  Chef John feels there are certain foods that are so fundamental to Italian regional cuisine that we absolutely need to nail them perfectly by the time we finish this course.  This includes things like pizza, focaccia, handmade pasta, and ciabatta, just to name a few.  Pizza parties are fun but they’re also a way to keep practicing pizza-making to solidify our skills.  It’s a way to be in class without being in class.

Although Pastry Week wasn’t a particularly stressful week, we all seemed to let loose a bit more than we had at our previous pizza parties.  Maybe it was the anticipation of the stress that we knew would accompany the upcoming execution, menu execution, that is!

The next day, Saturday, was nominally a free day.  It was also beautiful.  The chefs packed picnic lunches for us and we had an al fresco lunch on the beach.  There was one little bit of business before lunches were distributed, however.  We needed to divide ourselves into two groups for our next menu execution, for which preparation started the next day.

Each group also had to randomly pick 10 slips of paper out of a box (well, this is a cooking school so it was really a plastic food container, not a box).  Each of the 20 slips of paper in the “box” contained the name of one of the 20 regions of Italy.  We had to come up with a menu that reflected each of our 10 selected regions.

My group was assigned dinner so we didn’t have a meeting to discuss our menu ideas with the chefs until noon the next day.  The other group, assigned to prepare a luncheon, had a 9 AM muster.  We took the afternoon off completely and planned to convene early the next morning to come up with menu ideas.  A few of us did research in the evening to identify the most characteristic raw ingredients and classic dishes of each of our regions.  This was a valuable head start the next day.

Coming up with a complex menu is stressful.  Coming up with a complex menu that meets Chef John’s criterion that it would be worthy of a €250 price tag is even more stressful.  Chef John likes complicated menus.  He also likes complicated dishes.  Sometimes a complicated dish becomes even more complicated during the days of preparation as Chef John gets a new idea that he “suggests” we consider.  There’s a certain gleam in his eye when an idea excites him and, suggestion or not, you know you’ve got to try it when he gets that look.  (Remember the pasta sfoglia from the end of pastry week?  It became one such complication.)

It took us all day, and I mean all day, to come up with a menu that met approval.  We also had to pair four wines with our meal.  We didn’t actually work on the pairing till the day before service but I’ve noted the wines along with the dishes with which they were paired.  Here’s where were our menu ended up:

Antipasto Tris

Caponata with Marinated Anchovy Crudo

Baby Octopus Salad Perfumed with Citrus in a Puff Pastry Shell

Small Arancini Filled with Cuttlefish and Peas on Spicy Tomato Sauce

Pane Carasau (Sardinian Crispy Flatbread)

Prosecco

Table Bread

Cibatta

Primo Piatto #1

Risotto with Peas and Pea Cream Garnished with Mint Oil, Fried Peas, Parmigiano Chips and a Fried Mint Leaf

Primo Piatto #2

Fregole allo Scoglio

(Sardinian Toasted Pasta with Seafood: allo Scoglio = from the Reef)

Falanghina

Primo Piatto #3

Cannolo alla Norma (see below, way too complicated for a parenthetical note)

Secondo Tris

Rabbit Involtini with Prosciutto San Daniele and Sage, Porcini Mushroom Trifulata

Rabbit alla Ligure

(Braised Rabbit with Olives, Artichokes and Pine Nuts)

Pan-Seared Rabbit Loin with Balsamic Onion Sauce

Potato Puree

Spring Vegetables

Focaccia with Parmigiano Reggiano and Black Pepper

Aglianico

Dolce Tris

Babà, Rum Syrup, Pistachio and White Chocolate Sauce, Candied Pistachio

Babà, Hazelnut Liqueur Syrup, Hazelnut and Milk Chocolate Sauce, Candied Hazelnut

Babà, Amaretto Syrup, Almond and Dark Chocolate Sauce, Candied Almond

Gelato

Vin Santo Gelato

Cantucco

Vin Santo

With our menu finally settled just before dinner on Sunday we put together a spreadsheet of all the ingredients we needed as our shopper would depart at 8 AM the next day.  We all went to bed early.

But before that, Chef Juan and Mariana (also a culinary school graduate) treated us to a wonderful traditional Venezuelan dinner on Sunday.  The hard work was to begin on Monday and this was a very welcome treat.

We were allotted kitchen time starting at 2 PM on Monday.  We met early in the day to plan out all the tasks, day-by-day, working towards serving our meal at 6 PM on Wednesday.  We then made the initial assignment of tasks for the first day.

As the focaccia recipe was mine, I was asked to make it.  Of all the remaining dishes I wanted to make the babà and the risotto:  the babà because I’d never made babà before and Masetro Caridi had just taught us how, the risotto because I love making risotto.  Because I was making the focaccia and the babà, it was logical that I should make everything that needed to be prepared in the Pastry Kitchen.  That still left the risotto as an option for me to prepare on the night of service as all the component parts would be prepared by the other members of our group.

I spent three calm afternoons (well, other than one melt-down by a kitchen assistant on the last day) in the Pastry Kitchen (called the Pastry Lab, here).  I made:

1. Biga (a preferment for ciabatta)
2. Cibatta
3. Focaccia
4. Pane Carasau
5. Cannoli Shells
6. Cantucci
7. Babà
8. Three different liquor syrups for the Babà
9. Chocolate-free sauces for each of the Babà for a guest who did not eat chocolate (one of the other students made the chocolate-based sauces)

   

Cannolo alla Norma is really a Frankenstein.  We took two classic Sicilian dishes, one sweet (Cannoli) and one savory (Pasta alla Norma) and combined them.  I made savory cannoli shells.  The filling was eggplant with three types of ricotta (fresca, salata, and infornata).  The whole thing rested on a puddle of tomato sauce.  This was one of the ideas that captivated Chef John after we had proposed a much more traditional pasta (Gleam…Suggestion…Execution).

As for the pasta sfoglia (puff pastry), we thought our antipasto was a done deal after Sunday’s meeting but somewhere around Tuesday Chef John thought it was too plain.  He suggested (Gleam…) that we make puff pastry shells to hold the baby octopus salad.  As we were nearing execution time, one of the other students was in the pastry lab rolling out, cutting, and baking the best of the puff pastry we had made on the last day of Pastry Week to make shells for the octopus salad!

The group asked if I would cover front of the house for the dinner.  Everyone agreed that I could still make the risotto and they would cover my position but it just seemed too complicated and stressful, as well as disruptive for the guests, so I opted to just work front of the house.

I had to introduce each dish, describe where it came from (if traditional) or how we created it using ingredients characteristic of one or more of our regions, describe each of the wines and explain why they paired well with the dishes.  I also added a bit of patter here and there to keep the evening light with anecdotes about the possible origin of the name “vin santo” and a story about Pasquale Caputo, aka Pat Cooper, the Italian-American comedian.

When the meal was over, the chefs marched into the kitchen to give us a bit of feedback (the positive feedback…the more critical feedback would wait till after break).  As they were leaving, I asked Chef John if we could open a bottle of wine in the kitchen (a violation of school rules).  He said we could do ANYTHING we wanted.  The emphasis was his.  I know the criticism, when it comes, will likely be sharp, as it should be (you can’t justify a €250 dinner without perfection), but I also know that his response was an indication we had done a good job.  It was a positive end to a taxing week.

Unlike our first menu execution where classes ended on the day we cooked and served our meals, we had one day of class left.

It was a pretty low-key day though.  We left at 8:45 in the morning on Thursday, March 21st for a “Cultural Excursion” to Azienda Statti.  The Statti Company (azienda = company) is located on an estate that has been in the hands of the Baronial Statti Family since the late 1700s.  The company is currently managed by two brothers, Alberto and Antonio Statti.

The estate originally produced olive oil.  Since the 1960s it has been producing wine but only in the last few decades have they endeavored to market wine under their own name.  The estate also has citrus groves, a range of other crops, 800 cows, and forage for the cows.

Organic waste from crushing grapes for wine, pressing olives for oil, and from cows is used to produce methane.  Much of the methane is used to generate electricity.  The olive pits are not used for methane but are dried and coarsely ground to produce fuel for pellet stoves used to heat the buildings.  The estate is energy self-sufficient, and even sells electricity back to the local utility.

After a tour of the grounds and winery we had a tasting of eight wines, four white and four red.  The group consensus was that the wines were quite good.  Remember, we had a whole week of wine tasting with a sommelier as well as the occasional guided tasting at other times so we’ve tasted a fair amount of wine.

Other than Cirò in northeast Calabria, Calabrian wines aren’t well known outside of Calabria.  Statti is trying to break into a crowded market.  One of their strategies is to price their wines aggressively low to try to gain market share.  Good wines at great prices equals a winning strategy for consumers.

Following the wine tasting we were served an array of locally produced cheeses and salumi with bread and olive oil, from Statti, of course.  Their olive oil is really good, too!

We got back to school minutes before lunch was served at 2 PM.  After lunch we were free.  A five-day break was looming and the atmosphere was relaxed.

The next day I planned on boarding a plane to Pisa to spend a few days with Zia Fidalma and cousin Massimo in Benabbio.

March 24, 2019

We’ve done a bit of bread and pastry throughout the course but for a week starting on March 11th that was our (nearly) exclusive focus.  We also had four additional students join us.  Annie, a pastry chef from the Philippines who was at the Italian Culinary Institute for Gelato Week, also stayed for Pastry Week.  Three Air Force personnel came for Pastry Week.  Each was a personal assistant, working for one, high-ranking Air Force officer.

The personal assistants do all the tasks of an executive assistant, like maintaining schedules and organizing their bosses’ activities, but they also maintain his/her uniforms (and business suits if he/she is required to wear civilian business attire as part of his/her Air Force duties); keep all areas of their bosses’ house that could be seen by guests in perfect shape; cook meals; and plan, execute, and serve dinner parties.  They were a nice addition to our group.  Their dedication and precision were awe-inspiring.

They were always the first to volunteer to try out ANYTHING and they were meticulous to the point of near perfection—even with tasks they had never attempted before (like laminating puff pastry and rolling it into a perfect rectangle!).

Apparently, when they go through culinary training in the Air Force, the accuracy of their dice is tested by passing diced vegetables through screens of various sizes to confirm that they are able to consistently create perfect diced vegetables.  They were all really excited about incorporating Italian techniques and foods into their cooking.

We had a crazy day of demonstrations and hands-on work on the 11th, including:

1. Pane Carasau, a crispy flat bread from Sardinia that I love and now know how to make
2. “Italian” Muffins (Chef John’s take on “English” Muffins—not Italian at all but fun to make nonetheless—and in a strange way not too dissimilar from Tuscan testarolli, of which there are several versions.)
3. Piadina, a flat bread (which we never finished because Chef Juan didn’t like the way the dough turned out)
4. Rosette (Roman bread rolls incised with a “rose” design on top)
5. Hot Dog and Hamburger buns (obviously also not Italian)
6. Mantovane
7. Pane Arabo

Chef John also demonstrated, and then we ate for lunch, a Piemontese pasta called Tajarin (dialect for tagliolini) made with an absurd amount of egg yolk.  It’s something like 40 egg yolks for 2.2 pounds of flour.  (It makes you wonder what all the whites were being used for.  I vaguely remember from early in the course that the whites were used, a long time ago, for clarifying wine.)  He also made Candereli, potato dumplings from Alto Adige that are basically the dough for a potato gnocchi stuffed with a meat filling.

Maestro Paolo Caridi (Facebook and Instagram), one of Italy’s top Pastry Chefs, joined us for two absolutely amazing days demonstrating how to make an amazing array of Italian pastries, sweet breads and confections, some pan-Italian and some local Calabrese treats.

I was pleased to discover that my cannoli recipe was very similar to his (smile) though he has the advantage of being able to fill his cannoli with sweetened sheep’s milk ricotta which is unavailable in Santa Fe.  I’ve even tried to buy sheep’s milk in Santa Fe to make my own ricotta but can’t find a source.

He made egg-shaped confections (Uovo Sodo Goloso) consisting of a “yolk” of marzipan surrounded by a “white” of white chocolate and pistachio paste. Using almond paste would have produced a more appropriate color for the “white” but he likes pistachios and they are a typical Calabrian product.  They also add an amazing flavor contrast to the marzipan center.  It was topped with melted white chocolate.  He made these treats by emptying out egg shells and filling them with the various mixtures.

Colomba was, perhaps, the highlight of the two days.  Essentially (this is an approximation but not far off) it is Panettone baked in the shape of a dove.  Panettone is a very rich sweet bread with candied fruits and/or raisins that is traditionally served at Christmas.  Colomba is the Easter equivalent.  This was a two-day project (mostly due to the multiple rises of the dough) that I feel I could execute where it not for the fact that I don’t have Lievito Madre (Mother Yeast).

Mother Yeast is a pre-ferment made with natural yeast.  It is similar to sourdough starter except that the final product isn’t sour.  Other types of pre-ferment are made with commercial yeast.  If all goes well, it takes about a month to make a respectable Mother Yeast.  Maestro Caridi demonstrated how to create and maintain one.  He has been keeping his going for 25 years with DAILY—yep, daily not weekly—feedings.  Try that without a staff of workers!  You’d have to take it on vacation with you.  Explain THAT to TSA!

Apparently, there is no substitute for Lievito Madre in this particular product and it’s not allowed to be called Colomba if commercial yeast is used.  Nonetheless, I am going to totally hack this recipe and use commercial yeast for my first go-round.  I’m going to do this mostly because ratios of eggs and butter to flour are exceedingly high.  It’s possible that the whole dough might just separate.  I don’t want to have spent a month cultivating Lievito Madre only to have the bread dough turn into a disaster.

If the colomba, and by association panettone and pandoro (which is like panettone but without dried or candied fruit) work out, it might be what finally compels me to maintain my own natural yeast starter.

In addition, Maestro Caridi demonstrated the following:

1. I Cudduraci, a sweet short crust pastry filled with shell-on hardboiled eggs, covered with another layer of crust, and lavishly decorated.  Apparently, this is a traditional Calabrese pastry that a woman makes for her fiancé.  The size of the pastry and number of eggs is supposed to correlate with the degree of “amore!”
2. La pitta ‘mpigliata, a traditional Calabrian sweetbread stuffed with candied fruits and spices.  It is very rich.  Traditionally it is given by a man to his fiancé.  You guessed it, the larger it is…
3. Agnello al forno, an almond short crust pastry in the shape of a lamb filled with candied fruits and nuts.
4. Agnello di marzapane, a lamb made out of marzipan.  This is Italy, near Easter, after all, hence all the lamb shapes and Easter breads.
5. Babà, small yeast-risen breads soaked in rum syrup.
6. Bocconotto, small filled pastries.  In this case, Masetro Caridi used a cream filling.
7. Fraguni, open-faced pastries filled with ricotta and salame that were originally carried as lunch for workers in Calabria.
8. Croccante, basically almond brittle
9. Torrone, Similar to croccante but without the sugar being cooked as dark.
10. Marzipan sweets, basically marzipan stabilized with a little flour, butter and egg white then rolled and baked.  Adding a little baking powder makes them crunchy.

After Maestro Caridi finished his two days, we had a crazy day in the Pastry Kitchen with Chef John and Chef Juan doing a tag team performance…er, demonstration.  They were simultaneously preparing dishes with instructions being shouted out between them like a yodel bouncing back from a facing hillside.

It was almost impossible to keep my notes straight but after weeks of practice with Chef John cooking multiple dishes as the same time, with me flipping back and forth between pages to get the instructions associated with the correct recipe, I just had to adjust my technique to directions being shouted out almost simultaneously for two different recipes from two different chefs.  Also, since Chef John hates down time, he would start yet another recipe while waiting for the previous one.  I often had three or four recipes being recorded at the same time.

That day we got experience with:

1. Pasta Sfoglia (puff pastry)
2. Italian meringue
3. Italian buttercream in two flavors, one vanilla and one hazelnut
4. Pizzette (tiny pizza to be served as a snack)
5. A brownie-like creation with abundant nuts but no flour
6. Cornetti, the Italian version of croissants but definitely different
7. Pasta Frolla, a short crust pastry for tarts

Friday morning was a market day, as usual.  The weekly open-air market in Soverato has really been picking up over the past few weeks:  more vendors, a larger array of produce, more customers.  I will definitely miss the array of foods available once I get home.  I’m even enjoying the chaos of the market.  Though I don’t speak much Italian, and I can’t understand a word of the local dialect, I know enough to make a purchase and occasionally trade a sentence or two back and forth with a vendor.

Friday afternoon there were a few demonstrations back at school:  Frollini (a sweet pastry that can be baked on its own or filled), Chocolate Mousse, Chocolate Ganache and a range of Monoportion Cakes (basically, in this instance, thin sponge cakes cut into shapes and layered with buttercream and covered with glaze (or not).

Afterwards, we each had to make a batch of pasta sfoglia (puff pastry).  I don’t imagine that I’m likely to make it again but I felt like I did a credible job, never having done it before.  The first step is rolling butter into a perfect square, which I did by placing it on parchment paper then folding the edges of the paper over to make a square.  It was then pretty easy to roll the butter to the folded edges creating a perfect square.

The butter went into the refrigerator while I rolled out the dough into a much larger square.  The sides of the square of dough had to be the length of the butter measured from corner to corner so that when the butter was put on the dough rotated 45 degrees, the four corners of dough could be folded over encasing the butter but not overlapping.

It’s then a matter of putting the butter on the dough, folding the dough over the butter then going through a series of successive folds of the whole thing, rolling and chilling between each, to achieve a block of pastry with 576 different layers after four successive folds.  With one more fold, you’d end up with 2304 layers but by then there is a real risk of having each layer be so thin that the butter leaks out.

There were no further plans to use the pasta sfoglia.  We were to just have the experience of making it.  It all got put in the freezer while we took a one-day break.  However, the pastry came in very handy during the menu execution that started the day after Pastry Week ended after Chef John made a last minute “suggestion” to improve one of our dishes.

Stay tuned…

March 11, 2019

Forget Fellini, he’s small fry.  (See a prior post).

This past week was Gelato Week.

We started out gently on Sunday the 3rd, belying what was to come next.  We had a free morning then had lunch of Risotto followed by Rolled Stuffed Pork with Mashed Potatoes and Broccoli followed by an Orange Marmalade Crostata (from marmalade we made during conserves week) in individual butter crusts that Ryan spent the better part of a day making.

In the afternoon we went to three gelaterie (plural of gelateria) to taste and critique gelati.  Chef Juan suggested that we sample the same gelati at each shop so we had a consistent point of comparison.  He further suggested that the two gelati be Fiordilatte and Nocciola (hazelnut).

Fiordilatte is absolute simplicity, consisting of milk, cream, and sugar.  There’s not even any vanilla.  There’s no hiding poor quality when making Fiordilatte.  In addition, Fiordilatte is the base for many different gelati so tasting that one gives a strong clue to the quality of many others, including many fruit gelati.

Nocciola is flavored with hazelnut paste—a very expensive nut paste if it’s made well.  Nut-based gelati are very popular in southern Italy and cost almost twice as much to make as Fiordilatte due to the cost of the nut paste.  Tasting a nut-based gelato is a good way to see if a gelateria is cutting corners, either in quantity or quality of nut paste.

We were, in fact, allowed to order as many different gelati at each shop as we wanted.  Most of us just ordered two, with one or two people also ordering an extra pistachio gelato to share.

We got back to school late afternoon and had a few free hours before dinner.

Monday started with several hours of lecture about gelato, including topics like serving temperature; ideal qualities (sweetness, creaminess, fluffiness, yumminess, and stability); ideal ranges for each of the major compounds in gelato (fat, sugar, protein, solids, etc.); anti-freezing power of different ingredients in gelato; basic gelato equipment; major indicators of poor quality gelato; gelato “pre-mixes” (the gelato equivalent of a boxed cake mix…you can guess how Chef feels about these!); and the differences between sorbetto, cremolata, and gelato.

Around 11 AM we had a brief pause for a “grilled cheese” sandwich of house-made Porchetta and Fontal cheese on house-made rolls, cooked in truffle butter!  Truffle butter here is made from whole fresh truffles smooshed with butter—none of the (fake) “truffle” oil.  This was just to tide us over until lunch at 1 PM which consisted of a caprese salad and focaccia followed by pasta e fagioli.

The afternoon was taken up by the production of a number of different gelato bases that were pasteurized and then refrigerated.  The texture and flavor of the gelato improves if the mixture (called the base) is refrigerated for 24 hours before gelling.  The following bases were made:

1. Fiordilatte (milk, cream, sugar, dextrose, skim milk powder [needed for extra protein] and guar gum and locust bean gum [as stabilizers])
2. Caramel
3. Nut base (to be mixed with various nut pastes for an array of gelati)
4. Strawberry Sorbetto (a sorbetto is a gelato without dairy products)
5. Lemon Sorbetto
6. Savory Peanut Gelato
7. Orange Cream Gelato
8. Coffee Gelato
9. Rum Gelato

Don’t freak out about the guar gum and locust bean gum.  Both are really agricultural products that have been eaten for hundreds of years.  The alternative is using egg yolks, which are used in some gelati and which are more common in northern Italian, rather than southern Italian, gelati.  The disadvantage is that egg yolks introduce an eggy taste.

On Tuesday chef made the base for a chocolate sorbetto.  Remember, sorbetto has no dairy products.  When it was frozen it was absolutely delicious.  If you didn’t know, you would never imagine in your lifetime that it had no milk or cream!

Chef also made a “Yellow Base” using egg yolks and mascarpone, which was ultimately turned into Vanilla Gelato, as well as a Strawberry Coulis that was later swiped into a simple Fiordilatte gelato.

As the day progressed, many of the gelato bases from the previous day were frozen and then, of course, eaten.  When I say many, I mean MANY.

Since Tuesday was Fat Tuesday, and this being Italy, we ate well.  In between various gelati, lunch consisted of several meatball creations.  One was meatballs put onto a very large ring-shaped bread with lots of tomato ragu and cheese.  The next were meatballs cooked with sweet peppers and also made into sandwiches.  The third was meatballs and sauce on ciabatta.

Most of the afternoon was devoted to making gelato bases.  We each were tasked with coming up with a flavor of gelato, with swipe-ins and toppings if desired, and executing it.  Executing gelato means math.  There are ideal proportions for each chemical component of gelato and we had to create our formulas to achieve these proportions.  For example, milk is not just milk, it is water, sugar, fat and protein.

The optimum proportions of each ingredient, according to Chef are:

1. 6-12% fat (less than ice cream)
2. 16-22% sugar, of which glucose is not more than 20% (more than ice cream)
3. 8-12% skim milk solids
4. 58-68% water
5. 32-42% dry residual

This adds up to more than 100% because the dry residual is not a separate category but is the combination of anything in the gelato mix that remains behind if it is dried out, e.g. milk solids, sugar, etc.

Coming up with a new gelato formula, then, means determining which ingredients in which proportions will produce a mix of the desired qualities.  Of course, this is only the beginning.  The gelato has to taste yummy, too.  But getting the numbers correct is a step in the right direction.

I chose to make Tiramisu gelato for which I needed to come up with a Mascarpone gelato base.  I then needed to make tiny, tiny cakes flavored with espresso that were baked, dried and re-baked until crisp before being soaked in rum syrup and dropped into the gelato while it was being extruded.  On top was a drizzle of chocolate mixed with oil so it would not get too hard.

Wednesday started with an explanation of how to make Brioss (dialect for Brioche).  These are similar to French Brioche.  They are used for gelato sandwiches.  Unlike American “ice cream sandwiches,” these are truly sandwiches:  fluffy, slightly sweet brioche filled with different flavors of gelato, often three of them.

Chef gelled some of the Fiordilatte base from the previous day and made Stracciatella (ragged) gelato.  Stracciatello gelato  is basically Fiordilatte on top of which is drizzled wisps of melted chocolate which are broken up and worked into the gelato when it is served.    Chef also made Frutta di Bosco (fruit of the forest) gelato (mixed berry gelato) after which Chef Juan made Masa Chablon (a chocolate coating) using white chocolate.

Chef then made his knock-off of Nutella, which he had made previously.  It is simply a mixture of about 2 parts melted, high-quality milk chocolate and 1 part hazelnut paste with a pinch of sugar.  Without a doubt I could sit and just eat tubs of this stuff.

Nut pastes in Italy are truly amazing—and very expensive.  They are basically nuts, and nuts only, ground under heavy rollers until they produce the most ethereal and wildly flavorful creamy pastes.

I had a revelatory moment when Chef made white chocolate crumble.  This is truly amazing.  Just take a big bar of exceedingly high-quality white chocolate and put it in the oven at 180°C until it turns light brown all over and the entire thing caramelizes.  Let it cool, crumble it, and drizzle with a bit of salt.  You will have no idea it is white chocolate and it is the most sublime crunchy crumble for an enormous array of desserts.

In the afternoon we started gelling the gelati we mixed up the day before.  As they were made, they were dished out for the entire class.  Here’s the rundown of what we ate:

1. White Chocolate Gelato with Caramelized White Chocolate Crumbles (see the previous paragraph)
2. Coffee Gelato with a Toasted Walnut Swipe
3. Almond Milk Tea Gelato
4. Almond Gelato with Milk Chocolate Stracciatella
5. Chocolate Sorbetto
6. Spicy Chocolate Gelato (made with the addition of pepperoncino syrup)
7. Amaretto Gelato with Chocolate and Chopped Almonds
8. Tiramisu Gelato with Rum-Infused Coffee-Flavored Cake and Chocolate Drizzle (mine)
9. Strawberry Gelato with Zabaglione
10. Savory Peanut Gelato with Italian Meringue Toasted “Marshmallows”
11. Orange Gelato with Chocolate-Dipped Candied Orange Peel
12. Pineapple, Ginger, Turmeric, and Basil Gelato with a Honey Drizzle
13. Red Wine Gelato with a Pecorino Cream Swipe and Candied Pancetta

We stopped there and continued the next day with:

1.  Vanilla Gelato topped with cubes of Pandoro (a sweet bread like Panettone without the fruit)
2. Earl Grey Tea Gelato with a Dried Fig Swipe
3. Gorgonzola Gelato with a Pear Coulis and Chopped Walnuts

We didn’t make it to the last one:  Bourbon Brown Sugar Gelato which we had the next night after dinner.  It was wonderful.  It was just a Fiordilatte base with Bourbon poured in.  I am definitely going to make this one!!  I offered, multiple times, to store it in my freezer but so far that hasn’t happened.

On Friday, the last day of Gelato week, we had an extended lecture about setting up a gelato business including necessary equipment, layout of an ideal gelato kitchen (or gelato lab, as it’s called here), pricing models for gelato, showcasing and storage of gelato, and some business ideas.

Gelato week wrapped up with a pizza party—just a party this time, no contest—in the Pizzeria with the wood-burning pizza oven.  It was a relaxing end to a very educational, but exhausting, and overly caloric week.

Saturday was a free day.  Sunday started Pastry Week, for which three new students joined us.  Stay tuned…

March 3, 2019

Sommelier Week ended on February 26th with a MORNING TASTING!  Got that?  Alcohol for breakfast!

To be sure, one reads lots about wine experts swishing and spitting when tasting wine, and I suspect they do much of the time.  I’ve always found that a bit curious though.  Granted, without swishing and spitting the accuracy and reliability of the tasting would decrease as the event went on.  Nonetheless, there is a whole sensory experience that happens when you actually SWALLOW the wine that cannot be achieved by swishing and spitting.  At least that’s been my experience.

I was pleased then, when on the first day of our Sommelier Week, Chef Mark McDonald suggested that we actually swallow the wine, at least once for each wine tasted.  I can truthfully report that everyone swallowed every time.  There was no swishing and spitting among members of our group.

The MORNING TASTING started with a very small pour of each of two different vintages of a Lebanese white wine.  The vintages were 2003 and 2001.  Each wine could still age for another 10 years.  That is amazing for white wine!  And, when you consider everything Lebanon has been through it just nothing short of miraculous that wines like this are still produced.

We had a quick taste of a 1997 Riesling before moving onto beer.

Think about it.  Beer is made from grain and yeast.  It’s really just liquid bread, right?  Not so bad for breakfast after all!

OK, OK, so I exaggerated a bit.  We spent a few hours in the kitchen preparing for the evening meal before starting our wine and beer tasting with Chef Mark.

That evening was a new experience.  We’ve had pizza night where each of us made pizza of our choice in the wood-fired oven to share with everyone.  We had a menu execution for which, as a group, we had to create and execute a multi-course menu.  We had a pizza and cocktail night where, in teams of two, we had to devise a cocktail and a pizza that paired together and execute both in ten minutes!

On the last day of Sommelier Week however, we each had to make a first course for 18 people.  These got executed in succession.  One student made a soup, another risotto.  The rest of us made pasta…starting by making the pasta by hand that morning.

In the lead-up to Pasta Night, each of us had to submit three different options for what we wanted to make.  The Chefs then got to decide which we would make.  We were informed of our choices in the morning and had to set about preparing everything for that evening’s dinner.

I got to make Pasta Alla Chitarra with Mussels in Tomato Sauce with Pepperoncino.  My other options were Linguine with Clams in White Sauce and Lasagna Bolognese.  I have become enamored of the chitarra (see below).

Chitarra is the Italian word for guitar.  It is also the word for a device that is used to cut pasta using guitar strings.  It fascinates me far more than cutting pasta using a pasta machine.  Apparently, the chitarra cuts the edges of the pasta more sharply causing a different reaction with the sauce than is obtained using a pasta machine (Italians are truly food obsessed and discussions like this are not uncommon, even among non-chefs).

After each of us made and served our Primo Piatto (First Course, which can be pasta, risotto, or soup), the chefs each created a pasta.  Each chef, that is, except Chef John (who runs the school) and Chef Chris who was planning on making a Barley Risotto (Orzotto) which got shelved until Saturday dinner due to time constraints.  Chef Juan’s Chocolate Dessert Lasagna is the headline photo for this post.

It was a lazy few days after Pasta Night.  We had two days off followed by a slow Friday followed by another day off.

On Wednesday, the day after Pasta Night, eight of us hired a driver to take us to Pizzo and Tropea.  They are wonderful towns on the west coast of Calabria.  Both are also largely closed this time of year.

Pizzo is known for its Grotto Church, carved into the rock.  It was closed, though we did manage to snap a few pictures through the metal bars before leaving.

We stopped for gelato across the street where the proprietor offered to call the manager of the church to see if he would open for the Americans.  Oh, if we had only come two days later when he had different hours it would have been possible.  (Possible only in the sense that the official schedule said the hours were longer starting March 1st, not necessarily that the official schedule would be adhered to [see below].)

After gelato, we met our driver who, before taking us to Tropea, asked us if we wanted to stop at the castle in Pizzo, telling us that it was open.  We agreed.  The castle, however, was not open even though the signage indicated it should have been open (see above).  The benefit, though, was that the castle, unlike the church, was near the piazza, which we otherwise might have missed, and where we had a wonderful al fresco lunch before heading to Tropea.

I had fileja (a local pasta not unlike strozzapreti, but thicker) with a sauce of ‘nduja and tomato.

Tropea was also, largely, closed.  There is a small Alimentari (food shop) that several members of our group had been to on a prior visit but it was closed when we arrived.  Since most businesses in Calabria (except restaurants) close from 1 to 4 (or 5) it wasn’t clear whether the shop was closed for the season or for the afternoon.

Lucky for us, the Alimentari was just closed for the afternoon.  After padding around Tropea, and finding a crumbing building perched on a bluff overlooking the sea that needed to be purchased and rehabbed, we discovered that the shop was open.  I bought two ‘nduja salami and a big package of pepperoncino.

Our luck did not hold out with the restaurant where we wanted to have dinner so, around 5 PM we headed back to the school where we had dinner prepared by Chef Chris.

Thursday was another free day.  The chefs made us an amazing brunch.  Mariana started us off with Blood Orange Mimosas made from freshly squeezed blood oranges.  This was followed by Eggs Benedict on Homemade English Muffins accompanied by Home Fries.  Next came Waffles with Market-Fresh Strawberries and Whipped Cream.

I opted for a 2 hour and 45 minute walk in the afternoon which included exploration of the hypermarket, Paoletti, in the nearby seaside town of Montepaone Lido.

Friday morning was a trip to the market followed by a free afternoon.  After the market in Soverato, we went to a restaurant supply store in Catanzaro Lido and then to the Guglielmo store.

Guglielmo is a local coffee roaster, the fourth largest in Italy.  Between the restaurant supply store and the Guglielmo store, I made quite a shopping haul.  Frank had taken my previous purchases (2 VERY LARGE sauté pans for pasta, 5 cookbooks, silicone molds, plastic drying racks for pasta and cheese, and four jars of spicy condiments) back to the States leaving me with more free space in my suitcase.

On Friday I bought a chitarra for pasta (see above); a press for fruits and vegetables (but also used at the school for octopus and terrines); a specially coated twine used for cured meats (much better than the butcher’s twine available in the States); plastic inserts for canning jars to keep the contents submerged under brine, vinegar, or oil; and porcelain espresso cups made to look like the flimsy disposable plastic cups used throughout Italy.

Saturday was another free day.  I was in the kitchen, however, experimenting on a focaccia recipe and making a batch of Carne Adovada thanks to Frank who brought New Mexico red chile on his recent visit.

Whenever we discuss the high quality of raw ingredients available in Italy, Chef John often points to the poor distribution system which means that most food is hyper-local.  International foods are in very short supply but if you can content yourself with Italian food, the hyper-local nature of the food supply means that meals are based on super-good and largely local ingredients.  Seasonality is a way of life.  Italians eat what is in season.  Not only is it better, it is cheaper.  For example artichokes are now 10 for €4, less than half of what they were just a couple of weeks ago.

As Chef John says, “Italy is blessed with poor distribution.”