April 14, 2019

The oven was turned on for the last time for the Master’s Program on April 9th.  As this blog is being posted, I am flying home from Italy.  The program officially ended on April 10th with a final dinner held in Catanzaro Lido.  There were about 36 of us counting students, family and friends, kitchen staff and faculty.

Tuesday, April 9th was our final menu execution.  We put on a dinner for about 30 guests.  On Sunday, the 7th we submitted our suggestions to Chef and he decided what we would make for the dinner.  Mostly we got to make what we requested.  We averaged about three dishes per student.

The dinner started with a cold antipasto buffet followed by primi (pasta and risotto dishes) that were plated in the kitchen and served to the guests.  We had two waiters to assist us.  There were a number of secondi (second plates…usually meat or fish) including Gerard’s insane Truffle Porchetta.  Slathered with pureed truffles before it was rolled and slowly roasted, Gerard figured the value of the Porchetta was more than his entire net worth!

I made three cheeses for the antipasto buffet as well as Lasagna Bolognese made in individual ramekins.  The cheeses I made were all Tomini, but flavored differently.  My request to also make Pecorino was not approved.  Probably because there wasn’t time to age it sufficiently.

The Tomini were made from raw cow’s milk though in the future I would definitely pasteurize the milk.  There are few cheeses that really benefit from being made of raw milk otherwise the risk just isn’t worth it.  Tomini can be made from sheep’s milk as well.  Finding sheep’s milk in New Mexico is difficult so my Tomini will likely be made with cow’s milk.  I’m also going to try a combination of cow’s and goat’s milk, though, as soon as I can find a source of non-homogenized milk.  Homogenized milk is not ideal for cheese-making.

Tomini are usually small cheeses, made in molds that hold 80-100 grams (about 3 ounces) when finished.  One style contains a fuzzy (penicillum mold) exterior, like brie and camembert, but most, in my limited experience, do not.  I opted for the latter.  They can, and often are, aged briefly (just a few days) to create a mellow cheese.  Longer aging is possible but given their small size two weeks is about the maximum.

To make Tomini, the milk is heated and inoculated with yogurt to begin to acidify it.  Subsequently rennet is added.  After the curds are cut, the proto-cheese is heated to firm up the curds before they are put into molds.  After draining and salting, they are aged for a few days at 10°C-12°C (50°F-53.6°F), just a little cooler than a wine cellar.  I am committed to having Tomini in our Santa Fe wine cellar soon!

Some of the Tomini were rolled in coarsely ground black pepper before aging.  Others were rolled in a mixture of sweet and hot peperoncino powder.  For others, the curds were mixed with minced fresh garlic and dried Calabrian oregano before being put into molds.  Tomini can also be aged in flavored oil such as garlic, rosemary or peperoncino oil.

As I was coating the cheese with black pepper and peperoncino, Adriana, the dishwasher who is filling in for Maria who recently had surgery, indicated that she rubbed her cheese with olive oil before coating them with spices.  I might give that a try.  I have no idea what it might do to the cheese but since these aren’t cheeses that age long, there’s no risk that the oil will go rancid as could happen with a long-aged cheese.

I made cheese for menu execution because Chef John, a week or so before, told me he wanted to see me make cheese (“and not ricotta”… his words) for menu execution.  It’s similar to his comment earlier in the course about wanting to see me make pasta ai frutti di mare or pasta allo scoglio (or a similar a la minute pasta made with seafood).  I think these are items that he’s using to gauge skill level or techniques that he thinks I need to know if I’m going to teach cooking (which I plan on doing on my return).

In any case, without his urging, I probably would not have made cheese.  Now I’m hooked!  The variety of cheeses that can be made without extensive aging times is incredible.  I can use the wine cellar.  If I start getting into aging for more than a month or so I suspect I’ll have to buy a refrigerated wine cave which will sit next to my gelato batch freezer… wherever that ends up!

I got a big compliment from Chef Juan’s mom, who’s visiting from Venezuela, regarding my cheese.  I also got lots of compliments about my Lasagna Bolognese (which is going to appear on the table at Easter this year!).

Step one was making the Ragu Bolognese which Chef John pares down to the absolute essentials compared to many published recipes (though I added a bit of garlic which he doesn’t do).  It’s packed with flavor from very few ingredients.  Step two was making fresh pasta and cutting it into circles that just fit inside the individual ramekins.  The pasta air-dried for a day.  Step three was making the besciamella and refrigerating it overnight so that I could squeeze it out of a pastry bag.  All of those steps happened on April 7th and 8th.

The morning of April 9th, menu execution day, was pretty mellow for me.  My cheeses were aging without need of attention until it was time to cut them and plate them for the buffet.  I layered 29 ramekins (the total that we had) with lasagna hoping that one of our 30 guests didn’t want lasagna!

It was a Zen-like meditative experience:  A thin layer of ragu, a sheet of pasta, another thin layer of ragu, then besciamella piped in to cover, then Parmigiano Reggiano cheese then pasta, followed by more ragu, besciamella, and Parmigiano followed by pasta, then ragu, Parmigiano and a drizzle of melted butter.  This brought each ramekin to just below the top.

I put them on a sheet tray, inverted another sheet try on top, and put them in the walk-in.  My work was done.  I spent the rest of my time in the kitchen helping others who had more last-minute work to do.

The lasagne were served as the first primo of the evening and therefore the first plated dish after the serve-yourself antipasto buffet.  I baked them and drizzled them with a tiny bit of house-made rosemary oil just before serving them.

Before we got to the primi, however, Chef John made a little speech and then gave us our certificates.  A few hours earlier we had gotten our official Italian Culinary Institute Chef’s Jackets which we were all wearing.  It was an emotional moment:  the culmination of three months of hard work and weight gain in the service of researching the flavors of Italy.  (It sounds facetious but it’s really true.)

I’m starting to draft this post on Thursday.  All the students left today, except me.  When planning my flights, I decided that I didn’t want to be rushed with packing during the last days of the course so I planned my departure for Saturday.

Today, Chef Juan and I spent a couple of leisurely hours inspecting all the salumi we made back in January and “maintaining” the large cuts, like prosciuttino and capocollo.  Maintaining means checking weight loss.  Each type of cured meat product has an ideal percentage of weight loss as part of the curing process.  Maintaining also means cleaning off any mold with white wine vinegar.

Mold is a natural part of Italian salumi.  Mold doesn’t really penetrate the surface of the meat.  As it appears, one just cleans it off.  Ideally the meat is checked every few days.  Sometimes one reapplies another coating of whatever seasoning was on the exterior.  The seasoning doesn’t really penetrate the meat any longer as the surface is dry but it acts as another protective layer on the meat.  Some of the cured meats that we made in January won’t be ready till October.

On Friday, the staff was reorganizing the kitchen after our three-month marathon and taking inventory.  I “maintained” all the salami and then vacuum-packed everything that didn’t need more aging.  My afternoon was spent packing for my departure.

Once I get home on April 14th I’ll be in full-cooking mode getting ready for Easter dinner.  I’ve taken my lessons to heart and plan on making the following assuming I can get all the ingredients:

Antipasto (served on individual plates while having cocktails)

Ricotta Fresca Fatto in Casa, Condita con Olio d’Olivo

Melanzane sott’olio

Tonno del Chianti

Fraguni

Salame con Pane di Formaggio alla Romana

Arancini con ‘Nduja

Fave con Pecorino

 

Primi (served in sequence on individual plates)

Risotto con Piselli, Crema di Piselli, Olio di Menta

Minestra di Fagioli Borlotti di Zia Fidalma

Lasagna Bolognese

 

Secondo

Abbacchio alla Romana

Carciofi e Patate

Focaccia

 

Dolci

Torta di Agnello di Sanguinamento (Rich DePippo’s Bleeding Lamb Cake)

Babà con Sciroppo di Rum

Gelato di Crema di Arancia, Scorza d’Arancia Candita, Cioccolato Bianco Caramellato Sbriciolato

My plan for the summer is to go through my notes from the course and cook, cook, cook.  I feel like I need to do that to integrate the information and truly make it mine.

I plan on making my way back to Italy at the beginning of August for about two months for guided independent study in regional Italian cuisine both at the Italian Culinary Institute and at venues in north and south Italy.  Until then, I’ll try to get back to a regular schedule of posting blogs with recipes and stories.

Bene, allora, arrivederci a tutti!

Last minute update:  I’m spending the night before my trans-Atlantic flight at Il Picolo Bed and Breakfast that is, quite literally, a five minute drive from Leonardo da Vinci airport in Fiumicino.  The owners suggested I have dinner at BioAgriola Traiano, about a five-minute walk from the B&B.

The food was wonderful.  The owner speaks five languages and, when she heard I was a chef, she brought out the kitchen staff (both in their 20s) to meet me.  The food was superb!  I have to make visits to the B&B and the Agriturismo a regular part of my trips back to Italy.  It won’t be difficult given how close they are to the airport.

April 8, 2019

Cheese Week started on Sunday, March 31st.  But first, as has become customary when new people join us for a week, we went out for pizza the evening before.  The pizzeria is Il Ghittone in Montepaone Lido, a nearby town.  It’s the pizzeria that serves French fries and pizza…the one that has the automatic external defibrillator that I mentioned in a prior post!

Pizza and French fries were child’s play compared the fat-and-cholesterol-laced week we were about to encounter.

Sunday started out slowly.  It was a day devoted to tasting Italian cheeses.  It was meant to be an introduction to the coming week.

We tasted and discussed each of the following cheeses:

1. Ricotta di Pecora (sheep’s milk ricotta) served with orange blossom honey
2. Ricotta di Vacca (cow’s milk ricotta)
3. Pasta Filata (pizza cheese) [Pasta Filata, in addition to being a cheese in itself, is also the name of an entire family of cheeses that includes numbers 4 through 9 below.]
4. Fior di Latte #1 (essentially Mozzarella but made from cow’s milk so it’s not called Mozzarella in Italy)
5. Fior di Latte #2
6. Provola (not as aged as Provolone)
7. Provolone Dolce (“sweet” Provolone, but aged more than Provola)
8. Provolone Piccante (“spicy Provolone, i.e. aged longer)
9. Burrata (fresh Fior di Latte or Mozzarella surrounding a center of shredded, Pasta Filata [called stracciatella] mixed with heavy cream)
10. Burrino (sheep’s milk cheese surrounding a center of butter)
11. Robiola di Vacca (much like American cream cheese but a bit softer)
12. Stracchino
13. Taleggio
14. Taleggio with Mostarda
15. Formaggio di Capra Semistagionata (partially aged [semistagionata] goat cheese)
16. Grana Padana
17. Pecorino Romano
18. Pecorino Sardo
19. Caciotta
20. Gorgonzola Dolce

Between #13 and #14 we were served a snack of pizzette (mini pizza) with truffled pasta filata and mozzarella—just to fend off hunger (right!).

Mid-afternoon we had a cannoli-inspired “snack” made with sheep’s milk gelato (in place of ricotta) topped with chocolate chips, an unbelievable slice of candied orange (not orange peel, but a whole orange!), and a cannolo shell.

After the last cheese, we had a few hours to recover before having a cheese-inflected dinner.  After a couple of statins and some red wine for the resveratrol it was time for bed.

Monday was a day of lectures by Yi-Chern Lee, a milk scientist and Product Manager for Fonterra in New Zealand.  But first…Chef John wanted to feed us!  We moved from the dining room, which had been set up as a lecture hall, to the kitchen where we were served polenta concia.

Chef John’s version of polenta concia was over the top and it was exactly the reason that I did not have breakfast before getting to class.  I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that Chef John loves to feed people and loves to present them with new flavors.  When Chef John is not teaching, as was the case on this day, he is more likely to use his time in the kitchen to whip up one dish after another for us.  I figured we weren’t going to get far through the morning before food arrived so I skipped breakfast though I did have a doppio (double espresso).

Chef’s rendition of polenta concia consisted of polenta with milk added for smoothness.  After cooking it was mixed with Parmigiano Reggiano and porcini trifulata (sautéed and braised porcini mushrooms) and put into individual terracotta bowls with a splash or three of extra-virgin olive oil on the bottoms.  An egg was put on each one after which they were baked and then topped with Lamb Ragu.

Appropriately fortified, until lunch, Yi-Chern started his lecture.  He covered a lot of territory starting with the basic chemical constituents of milk from different animals and factors that affect milk and milk quality.  Much of the day was devoted to discussing each of the possible steps in cheese-making.  Not all of the steps are used for every cheese but we covered all of the possibilities.  I have 12 pages of notes from his lecture.

The next day, Chef John demonstrated one of many possible ways to make cow’s milk ricotta.  It is pretty much identical to the method I have been using though I learned a few tricks about how to keep it creamy should one want it creamier rather than drier.  It’s called direct ricotta in that it is made directly from milk.

Traditionally ricotta is made from the whey left over from cheese making.  The whey is acidified and heated which causes that last bit of protein to coagulate forming ricotta.  The yield is very low so unless you are producing cheese on a very large scale it is not practical to make ricotta using this method alone.

After the cow’s milk ricotta, the rest of the day was devoted to making sheep’s milk cheeses and other dairy products, including:

1. Yogurt
2. Buttermilk
3. Tomini di Pecora (of the following varieties):
   • Calabrese
   • Sardo
   • Fossa
   • Toscano
   • Luinese
4. Pecorino Romano
5. Pecorino Tartufo
6. Piacentum Ennese (with saffron)
7. Pecorino with Oregano and Peperoncino
8. Pecorino with Green Olives
9. Canestrato
10. Pecorino Porcini
11. Pecorino with Arugula, Roasted Black Olives, and Sun-dried Tomato

Wednesday was devoted to learning to make ricotta and mozzarella from Maestro Salvatore Postella, who has been making mozzarella by hand for nearly 50 years.  He says his largest production was a day when he made 6000 balls of mozzarella…and not those tiny little things, either!

We started the process at the beginning by heating 100 liters of fresh cow’s milk.  Technically, this is fior di latte, not mozzarella, since it is made with cow’s milk instead of water buffalo’s milk.  The milk needs to be heated, starter cultures added then rennet added, curds cut in large pieces, curds cut in small pieces, curds matured in the whey, curds drained and formed into a large block, block of curds cut into small pieces, curds heated with water at 90°C (194°F) to pasteurize them and to work them until stretchy before forming into mozzarella balls.

Working mozzarella means putting your hands into water that is close to 194°F!  At my house in Santa Fe, water boils just below 198°F.  Imagine putting your hands in that!!

Now visualize making 6000 balls of mozzarella on the same day!

In any case, Maestro Postella is amazing.  The beauty of his movement with just a gentle flip, then almost caressing the curd followed by three small twists and he’s formed a ball of ethereal mozzarella.  Ours, on the other hand were like baseballs! But, hey, he’s done this for 50 years.  Besides, continuing to work the cheese takes it from mozzarella territory to pizza cheese to provola.

After doing a “play” mozzarella when Maestro Postella invited us to try with the odd bit of curd, I decided to make provola when we were each given an actual portion of curd to work later in the day.  The “play” mozzarella coupled with my experience trying to form mozzarella back at the beginning of the course (in January) convinced me that one or two more attempts wasn’t likely to gain me more skill.  I decided to try to make something where the extra working of the curd was actually a requirement.  Getting some pointers on making provola could actually be helpful in the future if I decide to delve more into cheese making.

The next day, Chef John demonstrated the difference between mozzarella made by Maestro Postella and mozzarella made by us by breaking one of each open.  Ours just couldn’t compare.  His was light, fluffy, and still oozing with liquid, just like good mozzarella should.  Ours really was pizza cheese!

When Chef John pulled a provola out of the bowl of “our” cheese, he asked the kitchen staff (in Italian) who had made it.  (I did.)  The answer came back in Italian and was never uttered in English.  He said that it was well formed and of the right texture.  I felt pretty good about that!

But back to Wednesday.  Maestro Postella made burrata, for which several of us shredded pasta filata to make stracciatella.  He also made ricotta starting with the whey from making curd for mozzarella.  As noted above, this is the traditional way to make ricotta, which means re-cooked.  Maestro Postella used a hybrid method, whey for acidification but with the addition of milk to provide enough protein to make a reasonable quantity of ricotta.

Ricotta is made by taking whey (or whey and milk or milk and cream), heating, and then adding an acid such as lemon juice or vinegar to cause the proteins to coagulate.  It squeezes the last little bit of cheese out of whey that has already been used to make a primary cheese.  You would imagine from this, and you would be right, that way-back-when ricotta was the food of the poor.  No longer…obviously!

On Thursday we started out learning about different ways to salt cheese.  The rest of the day was devoted to the making of cheese and other dairy products from cow’s milk, including:

1. Caciotta
2. Stracchino
3. Camoscio
4. Mascarpone
5. Taleggio
6. Gorgonzola Dolce
7. Cream Cheese (American)
8. Ricotta Salata
9. Caprino (a fantasy cheese made from goat and sheep’s milk)
10. Grana (type)
11. Fontal (type)
12. Crème Fraiche

Cheese Week wound down on Friday with our last visit to the open-air market in Soverato followed by a visit to an artisan producer of buffalo mozzarella and sheep’s milk cheeses.

Back at school, after lunch, Chef reviewed all of the cheeses that had been made during the week and recapped the salting, aging, and conserving processes for each.  Afterwards the four Cheese People went into the kitchen to make their own cheeses.  The Masters students were briefed on the details for our next Menu Execution, our last effort before graduation.

April 2, 2019

Friday, March 22nd was the first day of a five-day break at school.  I headed for the airport in Lamezia Terme and boarded a RyanAir jet bound for Pisa.  Cousin Massimo was meeting me at the airport and taking me to Benabbio to spend a few days with him and Zia Fidalma.

The flight was uneventful but boarding was a bit chaotic.  Though it seems to vary on different routes, RyanAir basically has three levels of tickets:  Cattle Call, Priority, and Priority with Expedited Check-in.  Priority sounds like a good thing since you get priority boarding (there’s no such thing as boarding by row or group number in Italy) until you realize that more than half the plane has bought Priority; mostly so they can bring more than a toothbrush onboard.

Before the announcements start at the gate, passengers start forming into a mob, polite mind you, but still a mob, stretching from the gate agent outwards, filling any possible space in the boarding area.  Apparently, this is Priority but unless you’ve flown RyanAir before, you wouldn’t know.  Till I figured out what was going on (which really taxed my minimal Italian), I was only a few passengers from the end of the mob.

The Cattle Call passengers actually stay seated in the gate area.  They can only bring on one bag that weighs a maximum of 7 kilos (just under 15½ pounds) and it has to fit under their seat, which is likely to be a middle seat since they don’t get to select their own seats.  They don’t really need to try to sneak on the plane early, as happens in the States, because they don’t need to struggle for bin space because they can’t bring more than one small bag onboard.

There was a small group of Priority Plus passengers queuing tranquilly at the gate.  None of them was Italian.  It’s not clear why they’ve paid more than the cost of Priority to get expedited security screening.  The airport in Lamezia Terme is small and there’s not much time to be saved.  Also, the Italians don’t make you take off your shoes or remove your liquids or laptop!  Getting through security is pretty easy.

It turns out that being at the end of the Priority mob isn’t a big deal.  After we clear the gate, we head down the ramp to form another mob near a set of sliding glass doors.  There’s lots of empty space and I get a spot near the doors as people congregate leisurely in this much bigger space.

Once all of the Priority passengers are in the new holding area, the doors open and we walk across the tarmac to the waiting plane.  This is not a regimented, walk-in-a-line-on-the-striped-area-toward-the-plane walk.  This is more like the running of the bulls in Pamploma, just slower.  Italians never seem to be in a hurry, unless they’re driving.  I head toward the stairs at the back of the plane because my boarding pass says that’s where I should enter.  It turns out, I’m pretty much in the middle of the plane (row 18 out of 36 rows).

Italians never seem to be in a hurry unless they’re behind the wheel.  (I just said that, right?)  They stand in the aisle having conversations, taking off their jackets, neatly folding their jackets, putting their folded jackets on top of their bags in the overhead bins, having more conversations, thinking about getting out of the aisle and sitting.  I’m convinced they’d stand there and have coffee if they could!

I finally make it to my seat, still uncrowded and with open overhead bins, but not before a slight, soft-spoken older man with a nice smile tries to have a conversation with me…in dialect.  I had no idea what he was saying and smiled and nodded as I found my way to my seat, hoping I wasn’t being socially inappropriate.

Massimo picked me up at the Pisa Airport and we drove about an hour to Benabbio where Zia Fidalma, and lunch, were waiting.  Lunch was Zia’s wonderful Minestra di Fagioli made with borlotti beans, cooked and pureed, with a bit of pasta (lumache, specifically) added.

I heard about this soup when Zia Fidalma, Massimo and Francesca visited Calabria in February.  It definitely lived up to the hype.  At the table we drizzled it with unfiltered olive oil made from their own olive trees and added a bit of black pepper.  Red wine accompanied the soup.  Bread allowed me to sop up every bit of soup from my bowl before proceeding to cheese and fruit.

After lunch, Massimo and I walked to their garden plot full of olive trees.  In years past, vegetables would have been planted among the trees but no longer.  We picked a wild green, cavoletto, which accompanied our dinner later that day.

After lunch Massimo and I took a drive.  First to Fornoli to see the house in which my father-in-law grew up, dubbed Casa Pieri by Zia Fidalma and Massimo.  The house, 90 square meters (less than 970 square feet), is for sale for €150,000, a steep price.  Afterwards we went to Barga, a picturesque town where my husband’s grandfather was born.  We made a short stop at a wine shop in Bagni di Lucca owned by one of Massimo’s friends before getting to Benabbio just after 7 PM for dinner.

Bourbon is difficult to come by in Italy.  After a bit of Russian vodka, we settled down to dinner:  Fettine di Manzo in Umido (thinly sliced beef cooked in a small amount of tomato sauce with olives—and sometimes capers), purè di patate, cavoletto briefly boiled and dressed with olive oil, and bread.  The olives were from their trees and cured by Zia Fidalma.  The olive oil was also their own production.  Fruit and cheese rounded out the meal for me, though there was also a homemade torta de mele (apple tart).

The next morning we did a grocery run to the big hypermarket in Gallicano, a nearby town, before stopping at the open-air mercatino in Bagni di Lucca.  Back at home we stood around the stove while Zia Fidalma made focaccette rimpiturite, which we ate hot from the griddle with stracchino.

Focaccette are thin savory pancake-like affairs made from a batter of flour and cornmeal with a slice of pancetta in the middle.  The whole thing is cooked between two cast iron griddles.  I declined dessert but Zia Fidalma was prepared to make necci, a thin cake made of chestnut flour.

We did a bit of walking around Benabbio, including looking at the outside of houses for sale.  The house adjacent to Massimo and Zia Fidalma is for sale.  It has a kitchen, large salon, two bedrooms and a bath on the first floor.  There is an additional room on the second floor.  On the ground floor is a workroom, a large cellar, and a garage.  I also got to meet Pancetta, a cat that belongs to Massimo’s cousin.

That afternoon we went for another drive, this time to Castelnuovo, hitting a few garden centers as well.  In the evening, after another nip of vodka, we met Francesca for pizza at Es Vedra in Fornoli.  Fornoli is where Casa Pieri is located.  In fact, Casa Pieri and Es Vedra are on the same street:  Viale Papa Giovanni XXIII (Pope John Paul XXIII Avenue).  Casa Pieri is at #1.  Es Vedra is at #94.

I’m happy to say that ‘nduja has invaded Tuscany.  I had a really wonderful pizza with ‘nduja and the better part of half a liter of wine.  Francesca assisted me by drinking a glassful after finishing her beer.  The pizza with ‘nduja was listed on the menu as Pizza Amnesia.  I can assure you that I don’t want to forget it!  I now think of Es Vedra as our neighborhood pizzeria even though we don’t own Casa Pieri…yet!

On Sunday I flew back to Calabria.  This time I knew the drill with Priority and managed to get in the right line at the gate.  After an uneventful flight home I was met outside of baggage claim by my driver.  As we were walking out of the airport at 1:45 he told me he needed to be back at 3:00 to pick up some other people.  Normally, the drive from the airport to the school is about 45 minutes, not counting parking, etc.  I assumed he might be a bit late for his next trip.  Not so!  We made it back to the school in 23 minutes!!!  Never once did I care to look at the speedometer as we were hurtling down the autostrada!

There were still two more days left to the break.  Other than a three-hour walk on Monday that was prompted by a bourbon run, I spent the two days relaxing.  The rest of the week was actually low key as well.

We had cultural visits on Wednesday and Thursday.  The Wednesday visit was to an agriturismo where almost everything we ate, including all the cured meats, were made in house.  The Thursday visit was centered around a visit to Squillace to see the castle, visit a small shop that produces hand-made and hand-painted terracotta and have lunch prepared by someone’s Nonna in the style of a shepherd’s lunch.

Despite the rain, we did the first two.  Unfortunately, Nonna had been hospitalized and was unable to make lunch.  Instead, we went to a restaurant where we were served a dizzying array of antipasti followed by a revelatory pasta of thick hand-made noodles (fileja, I believe) in a minimalistic, and minimal but delicious, tomato sauce with just the barest amount of porcini and shrimp.  It was truly a perfect example of how less can be more.

Friday was a day off though there was a run to the open-air market for those of us who wanted to go.  I managed to buy a large quantity of pepperoncino picante, which I plan to use to make cured meats, as well as two dozen babà molds.

Saturday was the last day before Cheese Week and the addition of new students to our group.  It had actually been several weeks since we last sat in the kitchen and had Chef John demonstrate the preparation of various dishes.  It brought a comfortable feeling, which several of us discussed later, to sit there and have Chef John demonstrate how to make Penne all’Arrabiata; Fegato di Coniglio con Porri (rabbit liver with leeks); Gnocchi, Spade e Melanzane (gnocchi with swordfish and eggplant); and Pasta alla Carbonara—all of which we ate BEFORE LUNCH.

After lunch, Chef Juan demonstrated a technique for making a frittata, which we, of course, ate, with bread and Roasted Garlic Aioli that Chef Juan also made to accompany the frittata.  In the afternoon we joined Chef Juan in the Pastry Lab to make Limoncello, Arancello, and Liquore di Melograno (pomegranate liqueur).  Chef John sent in afternoon snacks.  First was rigatoni with a sauce of pureed fresh green peas, the sauce for which he had demonstrated that morning.  Later we got White Chocolate Orange Spuma (mousse) with Panettone Browned in Butter and dotted with Whipped Cream!

With Cheese Week about to start the next day, for which four additional students would join us, followed by our final menu execution the following week, Saturday was really the last day we would be together ourselves as a group.  When all the work was done, Chef Juan sliced a beautiful Jamon Iberico de Bellota that he had brought back from Spain before we began the Masters Program in January.  He also served an amazing Morcilla (blood sausage) from Spain made with fat from Jamon Iberico.  A few bottles of wine rounded out the afternoon.

At 7:45 we headed out for pizza with the new students who were joining us for Cheese Week.  Our new adventure was about to begin.