February 15, 2019

Conserve Week (aka Dead Vegetable Week) began on Saturday February 9th.  It was a jam-packed week of brewing beer, fermenting apple cider, distilling spirits, mixology and preserving by drying, salting, smoking, pickling, packing in oil (sott’olio), packing in vinegar (sott’aceto)  But first it began with a brief critique by the Chefs of our menu execution from earlier that week.  Comments to the whole class were general.  Comments to the two groups were more specific.  Individual comments were provided if requested.

I requested, and a day or two later Chef and I retired to a corner of the adjacent restaurant during a non-service time.  He looked at me with this “why are we here” look.  I reminded him that I was coming to see if he had any feedback about my performance.  He looked at me and said, “You, no!”  We then went on to chat about other food-related topics, like what I wanted to do in the culinary world.

I owe a debt of gratitude to David Locke and Bill Forte, chefs I work with at the annual Palm Desert Food and Wine Festival who convinced me that I would hold my own against others with professional culinary training and that I shouldn’t spend time in a course that taught basics.  Their advice was to dive into a specialized course that focused on what I wanted to learn, hence my time at the Italian Culinary Institute.

The first day of Dead Vegetable Week was pretty low key and consisted of fermentation and distillation in order for us to learn the basics.  It was really an introduction that served the purpose of showing that making beer and wine and distilling alcohol are actually quite easy but can contribute immeasurably to the uniqueness of one’s cuisine.

We started to ferment two types of beer:  ale and pils.  We also started to ferment apple cider.  The process is similar to fermenting grapes to make wine.  Since this is not the season to make wine apple cider is the stand-in.  We also put up a wild ferment of fruit peelings and cores and other bits without the addition of packaged yeast.

We used a small copper still to distill a grain-based ferment (beer) and a fruit-based ferment (wine).  Honestly, beer was a pain.  With only 4.2% alcohol and a very small still, it was not realistic to distill enough to do anything substantive.  Distilling wine, with an alcohol content three times that of beer, was definitely more satisfactory.

To make the product useful, even as the base for extracting essential oils from citrus peels and other fruits, the alcohol would need to be distilled at least twice more.  Nonetheless, the experience of actually distilling showed how manageable and effective the process could be.  Updates on our ferments will continue for weeks until we’re ready to bottle them.  As for the distillate, I’m not sure what will become of it.

Conserve week got into full swing on Sunday the 10th.  Before work started on vegetables, however, Chef John felt the need to demonstrate several dishes.  We had three plates of pasta before 2 PM.  Each of the dishes had copious (and I mean copious) amounts of rendered pork fat from either guanciale or speck.

The pasta dishes included Pasta alla Gricia, Pasta all’Amatriciana, and Linguine with Caramelized Onions and Speck (a non-traditional, but very yummy, dish created by Chef John).

In between the pasta dishes, Chef demonstrated how to make Vegetable Demi.  A demi-glace is a French preparation that is a highly concentrated stock made in a very prescribed way.  Chef doesn’t use the term demi-glace, just demi, as he doesn’t make “real” French demi-glace.  His highly concentrated stocks, however, add a tremendous amount of flavor to dishes.  In addition to the concentrated stock itself, Chef refines the fat from the each demi and uses it enhance dishes in place of butter or extra-virgin olive oil.

We got lessons in cleaning artichokes and making meatballs, starting giardiniera, butchering salmon (OK, so there are a few non-vegetables included in Dead Vegetable Week), curing salmon, curing and smoking salmon bellies to make salmon bacon, making salmon jerky, stuffing and conserving hot peppers, pickling apples, roasting tomatoes, making and conserving apple marmalade and mostarda as well as cooking and conserving pleurotus mushrooms (a luscious mushroom variety that takes hours to cook but ends up meaty and tender).

Lunch was Chef John’s “very bastardized” Risotto alla Fiorentina.  It contained all the ingredients in a traditional risotto alla Fiorentina (gizzards, chicken livers and tomato sauce) but with a great deal more finesse and technique.

On the 11th we started Bomba Calabrese, a spicy conserve of finely diced eggplant, onions, sweet peppers and hot peppers preserved under oil.  The eggplant is peeled, thinly sliced, heavily salted and allowed to drain for a day.  It is then cut in small dice, rinsed in boiling white wine vinegar, then pressed through a grape press to remove as much liquid as possible.  When squeezing the second batch, Gerard, turned the crank one half-turn too far and eggplant cubes went shooting out of the top of the press and stuck to the ceiling!  There was no way Chef could say that we did not adequately squeeze the eggplant.

We also learned the calculations for sugar syrups as well as chef’s method for cooking dried beans (similar to mine) and then finishing them for a dish (removing them from the cooking liquid, cooking them until they dry out to create fond on the bottom of a pot then returning the cooking liquid and simmering briefly to release the fond and flavor the broth… not like mine!).  There was also the making of a smoked pepper puree, candied pepperoncini (hot peppers), balsamic-vinegar cured onions, and spicy eggplant under oil to be served as an antipasto.

Chef demonstrated other conserves that were not traditional, like zucchini bacon (if you’ve been reading these posts, you’ve probably noticed that Chef has a “thing” for baconizing anything that can be baconized), sun-dried tomato conserve, scallion sauce and pickled potatoes.  There was also pickled zucchini, pickled arugula (which seemed a lot like leftover salad), salmon jerky, and “veggie ‘nduja” (basically another variant on eggplant, sweet peppers, hot peppers and extra-virgin olive oil.

We wrapped up the day with our first session on Mixology.  Our mixology instructor is Evangelos Triantafyllopoulos (Agelos)  from Athens.  He is truly a gifted mixologist and an owner of the White Monkey Bar in Athens.  He is certainly a fun-loving jocular person who has the perfect persona to be a bartender but he is also a very serious, driven and hard-working person below that persona.

We learned his method (and several recipes for) making flavored syrups—and very creative ones at that—using sous vide.  (Yet another reason I am happy I bought a sous vide set up last year!)  He then demonstrated (and we tasted) a whole series of classic cocktails plus twists on them.

The morning of the 12th we went to an agritourismo nearby.  It’s owned by the same folks who own the Panino Lab where we’ve had lunch and also a wine tasting.  We picked oranges, lemons and mandarins—hundreds upon hundreds of them.  Really, probably thousands of them!

After a brief stop at the supermarket, we were back at the Italian Culinary Institute processing citrus.  I was initially on washing duty with a couple of other students.  This took a couple of hours.  After that, I joined everyone else who was zesting, peeling, and supreme-cutting the citrus.  After a quick lunch of cavatelli with scallion sauce simmered with simple tomato sauce we were back to processing citrus for a short while.

Chef demonstrated how to candy orange peel (well, really, just the first day of a three-day process) and made a batch of orange marmalade.  Chef whipped up a batch of orecchiette with pancetta and rapini to feed us again, just a few hours after lunch.

We were then turned over to Agelos for more mixology.  This included making foams, infusing spirits with the flavors of fat (like bacon and pancetta), and making cold infusions of spirits and fruits and other aromatics.  He also did a neat trick of infusing spirits with citrus zest almost instantaneously using a carbon dioxide cartridge and beverage carbonator.

Agelos then made (and we drank) another whole series of classic cocktails plus twists on the cocktails.  Bourbon featured prominently in these cocktails, and Agelos knew of my love of Bourbon, so I frequently got a whole drink for myself rather than one to share among others in the class.  I have to say that pancetta-infused bourbon, a little simple syrup, coffee bitters and a lemon zest garnish makes a mighty tasty “twist” on an Old Fashioned!  I’m looking forward to repeating this with bacon-infused bourbon when I get back to the States.

After mixology class, a handful of us went back to the kitchen for an hour and a half before dinner to help process more citrus.  As it turned out, staff worked on citrus all day, every day, for the rest of the week!

Because we had been making sugar syrups of different concentrations for both conserves and mixology, Chef Juan ended the day with a brief lecture on the formula for creating a solution with any desired sugar content regardless of the sugar content of the starting solution.  For example, you would add less sugar to fruit juice than to coffee to get a solution with the same amount of sugar.  While this is important for conserves and mixology, it is critical for gelato (which has its own week in the near future).

The formula is:  X = (P_F x S_O) – Z_O / 1-P_F .

February 14th started out with an excursion.  On the way to the bus we were met by Chef Juan handing out heart-shaped chocolate candy to celebrate Valentine’s Day.  Once on the bus, we headed to Tutto Calabria, a local artisanal producer of pepper products.  Calabria is known for its peppers, both hot and sweet.

Tutto Calabria has been around since 1970, having been started by the father of the three siblings who now run the company.  Although Tutto Calabria products are exported to the States, only a limited number of items from their line are available.  I bought a few jars of hot pepper products that I have never seen in the States.

We came back and had lunch (cacio e pepe followed by meatballs in tomato sauce).  After a short break we were back to mixology with Agelos.  He made some sours (including one that started with hazelnut gelato) and a blazer (a cocktail set on fire as it is poured back and forth between the two parts of the shaker).  He ended the lesson with a variety of martinis.

His dirty martini is made with a little oil floating on top rather than olive juice.  He made two, one with rosemary infused olive oil and one with oil from Bomba Calabrese (a hot pepper conserve we made in house) and a garlic and bay leaf infused extra virgin olive oil.  He called this the Steak Dirty Martini since it would pair perfectly with a steak.  His Breakfast Martini was similar to a Cosmo but included orange marmalade instead of pomegranate.  His Breakfast Tequila Martini was the best Margarita I’ve ever had.  In addition to marmalade in the mix, and a bit of salt on the rim, he put freshly ground black pepper on top.  We ended the session with an Espresso Martini garnished with coffee beans and topped with a few drops of coffee bitters.

After another brief break, we were back for a food and cocktail pairing from 5:30 to 6:30.  Four different foods were paired with four different cocktails.  All of the combinations were very good but, honestly, I was at my limit of caloric intake for the day.  The school made arrangements to take everyone out to dinner at 8:30 in honor of Valentine’s Day.  Unable to eat or drink anything else, I decided not to go.  It was the first school-sponsored activity that I missed since I arrived.  (Admittedly, I cut out early on some of the evenings that involved beer pong and blackouts but I was there for the beginning of all of them!).

Today wraps up cocktails and the majority of conserves, though we will make a few from time-to-time as other products come into season.  We’ll either see, do, or hear about the final steps on a number of the products that were started this week.  We’ll do a round of baking with new products we haven’t made before.  This evening ends with a pizza party, but not just any pizza party, it’s a contest of sort.  You’ll hear all about it in the next blog post.

February 11, 2019

“You look like a priest.”

I heard those exact words three times during my first week at the Italian Culinary Institute.  The first time was from Chef John.  The second time was from Chef Juan.  The third time was from another student.

Although the design of my chef’s coats is the standard shape, the collar of this particular coat has a slightly more relaxed and lower cut.  That means my undershirt shows through the notch in the collar of my chef’s coat.  The dark gray coat, coupled with a white undershirt, looks very much like the Roman collar worn by priests…that and the fact that I’m in a Catholic country.

Being the psychiatrist in the room, especially a psychiatrist who reminds people of priests, has its moments.  Mostly, I focus on cooking and don’t deal with the reality of my prior career.  It’s actually quite fascinating to be a student again, and turn my day-to-day experiences over to a crew of people who are consummate experts in their fields.  The content of what I did before is really not relevant.  In this context I am a student and my goal is to soak in as much information as I can.

The major task of this past week was to develop and execute a menu as part of a team.  Our class of 13 was divided into two groups.  My group of seven was assigned lunch and the group of six was assigned dinner.  Since the lunch group had slightly less time than the dinner group (at least theoretically) the extra person in our group made sense.

Menu planning started on Saturday, February 2, 2019.  After being randomly assigned to groups by pulling numbers out of a metaphoric hat, we went off to develop a menu concept.

The parameters were basic.  The menu had to include a trio of antipasti, an Antipasto Tris.  This was to be followed by a first course, or Primo Piatto, in Italian.  In an Italian meal a primo is either pasta, risotto or a soup.  The next course was another Primo, which is not part of the typical sequence of an Italian meal though could happen for a special occasion.  After our second Primo we were to make a Secondo Tris.  A Secondo in an Italian meal is the “protein,” either meat, fish or poultry.  To complicate it, once again, it was to be a Secondo Tris with three different dishes on the plate, accompanied by a Contorno.  A Contorno is a “side dish.”  The meal was to end with a Dessert Tris…you got it, three different desserts on the same plate.  We had to present four different breads, one with the Antipasto, one with the Secondo, and two on the table.  Luckily the wine pairings were handled (this time) by the chefs at the Institute.

Our team was instructed to cook Northern Italian food.  The other team got Southern Italian.  We spent Saturday afternoon working out a proposed menu.  Our initial menu was this:

Antipasto Tris
Bruschetta con Zucchine Sott’Aceto
Fiori di Zucca Fritti
Rotolino di Zucchine con Ricotta

Primo Piatto #1
Risotto alla Parmigiana con Frico e Aceto Balsamico

Primo Piatto #2
Farfalle ai Funghi e Gnepita

Secondo Piatto Tris e Contorno
Tartare di Manzo
Bistecca alla Griglia
Manzo in Umido con Olive Nere
Cannellini alla Toscana
Paninetti con Rosmarino

Dolce Tris
Pera Affogata nel Vino Rosso con Crumble di Castagne
Torta di Mele e Castagne
Pannacotta di Castagne

Sul Tavolo
Grissini
Ciabatta

Sunday was a free day.  I had work to do so I stayed at the school but everybody else went on day trips.  I had the washing machine to myself!!  We all share a washing machine so this was a big advantage.  The other interesting twist was that Chef John insisted that they would make lunch for me even though I repeatedly said I’d be happy to cook for myself.  I am in a large suite with a kitchen.

Cooking for myself was a non-starter with Chef John so I enjoyed a relaxing day of work and laundry punctuated by lunch.  I was told we would all have lunch in the kitchen.  The crew, including Chef John, Chef Juan, Chef Chris, Ryan and Erlyn (the kitchen assistants), Mariana (Chef Juan’s wife and the overall coordinator of the program), and at least one of the dishwashers, if not others, works every day.  That means they cook every day.  It didn’t seem strange that I would join them in the Kitchen for a meal.

At 1 PM, I walked from my suite to the school.   Upon entering the front room which is set up as a bar (both espresso and alcohol) with a counter and two bistro tables, I noticed that one of the bistro tables was set for two.  I was not eating in the kitchen.  The chefs had prepared a meal for me and I was dining with Mariana.

As each course came out, Chef John appeared to describe it.  The first course was Fusilloni (large fusilli) with a sauce of ‘nduja and tomato.  The ‘nduja was made that morning, specifically for lunch.  Chef said he knew I like ‘nduja.

The next course was a bright salad with orange.

Following that was braised pickled pork made in the style of corned beef.  This was something that had been started during the just-ended “Pig Week.” Small bread rolls rounded out the meal.

The rest of Sunday passed in bliss.  Monday morning was my scheduled appointment at the Questura to register my residence in Italy.  It was also the morning when my team was scheduled to present our proposed menu to Chef.  The appointment went well.  The fingerprinting part was actually fun.  The two guys doing the fingerprinting were surprised I was a student (I assume due to my age) but, once they heard what I was studying and where the school was located, the whole event became quite jocular.  One of the guys had gotten married at the hotel on the property shared with the school.  That became the focus of conversation.

I got back to the school half-an-hour into the scheduled meeting with Chef to discuss our proposed menu.  Much of the menu had gotten nixed by Chef, though a few dishes remained.  The rest of the day was spent in meetings with Chef, interspersed with team meetings where we tried to integrate Chef’s recommendations to refine our menu.

The menu we ended up with was:

Antipasto Tris
Fiore di Zucca Crudo con Insalata di Zucchine
Fiore di Zucca Fritti con Caviale
Fiore di Zucca al Forno con Ricotta, Bottarga e Zafferano
Paninetti con Olive

Primo Piatto #1
Risotto ai Funghi Porcini con Aceto Balsamico

Primo Piatto #2
Pappardelle con Ragu del Coniglio

Secondo Piatto Tris e Contorno Tris (Crudo, Cotto, Stracotto)
Tartare di Manzo con Broccoli Crudo
Bistecca alla Griglia
Rotolo di Manzo con Prosciutto, Lardo di Colonnata, e Funghi Selvatici
Broccoli Saltati
Broccoli Brasati
Paninetti con Rosmarino

Dolce Tris
Pera Affogagta nel Vino Rosso con Panna e Nocciole
Tiramisu alle Nocciole
Gianduja Caldo

Sul Tavolo
Focaccia al Parmigiano
Ciabatta

We started prepping for our meal on Tuesday morning.  We also had to prepare lunch for everyone that day.  The other group of students did the same on Tuesday afternoon and prepared dinner for everyone.

Wednesday was a repeat of Tuesday.

Thursday was the big day.  We had to prepare and serve our meal to ten people, the other six students and four faculty.  I’ve never really had the experience of just cooking.  It’s always been cooking and trying to spend time with guests.  This was different.  As stressful as I thought it would be, since we had to get each course out on time and many of them had to be prepared at the last minute, it wasn’t.  Just being able to concentrate on preparing the food perfectly and on time was actually a Zen-like experience.

That evening, after the other group finished dinner service, limoncello shots came out.  Things went downhill from there.  I went to bed at a respectable hour but apparently the evening involved beer pong, blackouts, conga dancing, and passing out.  The whole party got shut down when Mariana discovered four people in the school dancing in the conga line who were not from the school.

Friday was very subdued and consisted of our usual market visit followed by a tour of the fourth largest coffee roaster in Italy (Guglielmo) then a free afternoon before dinner.  After weeks of attempts, the barber finally made it.  Three of us got haircuts.  Things are different in Italy.  The little white paper “collar” is made of a crepe-paper-like substance rather than the thin tissue paper used in the States.  It also has an adhesive and therefore sticks to itself.  The stretchy quality of the paper coupled with the adhesive means it produces a pretty good seal around one’s neck.  After the cape was put on, the crepe paper was turned over it creating a neat edge.

My cut used a combination of an electric clipper on the sides and scissors on the top.  A straight razor, with a disposable blade, was used to trim the periphery: sideburns, neck, temples as well as removing some little fuzzy hairs on my forehead.  I’ve never had THAT done before.  I think he did a great job and the whole thing, including the house call, cost just €15!

After the haircuts, a few of us worked with Chef Juan on dinner of grilled burgers (pork, not beef–this is Italy after all and Pig Week had just ended!) and various side dishes.  Everyone went to bed early.  The next phase of our education was scheduled to begin the following morning:  Dead Vegetable Week.

February 3, 2019

The pig arrived on Sunday in the back of a van (well, actually it was a pig and a half).

The pigs were raised by a local family that also has a restaurant.  They were fed restaurant scraps (really good food) and finished with hazelnuts and chestnuts for the last three weeks or so.  Hazelnuts and chestnuts are plentiful here.

Each half-pig weighed about 165 pounds.  Getting to the school from the nearest access point for a vehicle involves at least one staircase.  Getting a 165-pound side of pig down a staircase is a group effort requiring strength and coordination.

The pigs went into our walk-in cooler to await class on Monday.

In addition to the 13 of us who are on this three-month odyssey of Italian Regional Cuisine, we were joined by 5 additional students for Pig Week.  We refer to them as the Pig People.  Apparently, we will also be joined by Gelato People, Conserve People, and Cheese People for a week each, during the remaining 10 weeks.  That leaves about seven weeks where it’s just the 13 of us.  I don’t think we’re joined by any Alcohol People for our week of mixology and distilling.

On Monday, January 28th, Chef John demonstrated how to butcher a pig into the primal cuts for processing into traditional Italian salumi (plus discussing a few variations on the cuts based on the objectives of the person doing the butchering).  Afterwards the other two half-pigs were brought into the kitchen for us to butcher.  I have three pages of (sometimes cryptic) notes on how Chef butchered the pig.

But first, of course, we had to taste.  We tasted at least seven different cured meats, all but one of them made at the school.

After being butchered into primal cuts, several large cuts were salted as part of the initial cure.  These included:

1. Pancetta Rotolo (rolled pancetta)
2. Pancetta Tesa (flat pancetta)
3. (American) Bacon
4. Capocollo

Chef wanted to completely disinfect the kitchen so we didn’t prepare dinner that evening.  Instead we went to La Tavernetta, the restaurant in the hotel on the same property as the school, for dinner.  It was a special event with one table full of local chefs and us at another table.  The meal was intended to highlight three versions of a local stewed trip dish, Morzello di Catanzaro, each flavored with a different hot pepper.  The first course, was an ‘nduja-stuffed potato puree on top of caciocavallo fonduta.  Then came three courses of stewed trip served inside of bread.  After the second, Mariana asked that we just get the stew, minus the bread, for the third round as the bread was not getting eaten (much of the tripe was not getting eaten either but that’s a different matter).  The meal finished with pistachio gelato on crème anglaise, topped with melted chocolate.

On Tuesday, we continued with making:

1. Franken-Fileto [see below]
2. Guanciale (cured pork jowl)
3. Porchetta [see below]
4. Pickled Pork (like corned beef but made with pork)
5. Lardo (a yummy slab of cured pork fat—similar to salt pork but better—not to be confused with rendered “lard” which is called strutto in Italian)
6. Prosciuttino (similar to prosciutto but smaller as the weather in Calabria is not conducive to curing an entire ham)
7. Speck
8. Tonno del Chianti

Butchering a pig for Italian Artisan Salumi (salumi is the Italian word that is equivalent to the French word charcuterie) creates a whole new perspective.  In the States, cuts like the loin and tenderloin are among the most expensive.  When purchasing a whole pig, every part of the pig costs as much as every other.  The most valuable cuts for curing are not the loin and tenderloin because they are too lean.  Much of those cuts ended up being made into sausage!

One of the tenderloins was turned into a Frankenstein version of a cured meat (Franken-Fileto).  The loin was carefully butterflied and topped with a layer of fatback that was pounded thin.  The combination, about 80% tenderloin and 20% fat, was salted for curing, tightly rolled in plastic wrap for shape, and hung in the refrigerator for 48 hours before being, unwrapped, tied and hung in the hanging room.

Traditional Porchetta is made from a whole suckling pig with the bones removed.  Porchetta-style roasts abound in Italy.  The one we made consisted of a slab of pork belly (the cut from which bacon and pancetta are made) rolled around the loin, tied, and roasted for hours.  Traditional seasonings include garlic, rosemary and fennel.  Chef opted to slater the meat, before rolling, with a massive quantity of pureed truffles.  [We have consumed an obscene quantity of fresh truffles since starting this course.]  The Porchetta went into the fridge to be pulled out for dinner on Wednesday.

Chef got creative and demonstrated the production of Rabbit Porchetta using 20 rabbit bellies and rabbit fat (remember the rabbits we butchered with stone knives?).  The Rabbit-chetta was cooked sous vide, then chilled, smoked, and brushed with maple syrup (OK, so it’s not Italian but it was good!)  He also made a Lamb-chetta from four lamb bellies that ended up being served as a snack of Lamb and Eggs a few days later.

Dinner was at a local pizzeria as the kitchen, once again, needed to be sanitized.

Wednesday started with a lecture on the science of meat curing by Chef Juan.  Other than herbs and spices for flavoring, the only product used at the school to cure meat is salt.  Absolutely no nitrates or nitrites are added.

The previous days as we were butchering the pigs, anything not destined for a specific purpose was put into one of two piles labelled Bollito #1 and Bollito #2.  Bollito simply means boiled.  Bollito #1 contained bones (like ribs) with some meat attached.  Bollito #2 contained all the other bits and pieces (specks of meat, gristle, silver skin, fat that wasn’t good for sausage making, etc.).  These were all soaked for a day in cold water in the fridge and then boiled…and boiled…and boiled.  The head and ears were also boiled.

Bones with meat attached (like ribs), from Bollito #1, were served with some broth, salsa verde, and bread as a snack!  The fat skimmed off the top of all the bollito pots was turned into strutto (lard).  Bits of meat from the head were turned into ‘nduja or coppa di testa (head cheese).  Any remaining bits became frischilimiti.  The broth was concentrated to make gelatin.

Frischilimiti (all those tiny bits of cooked pork) were crisped in a sauté pan with lard (of course, being pig week), eggs were nestled on top and when appropriately cooked, served as a morning snack with cotechino and bread.

The rest of Wednesday was devoted to seasoning batches of meat for our cured salami and fresh sausage.  The cured salami included:

1. Salsiccia (which is cured and not served fresh)
2. Sopressata
3. Salame Napoli
4. Salame Brianza
5. Salame Gentile
6. Ciauscolo
7. Salame Milano
8. Salame Fabriano
9. Salame Felino
10. Strolghino
11. Lucanica
12. Salame di Mugnano
13. Tartufo
14. Cotechino

After those were made, the 18 of us were set free to each make a fresh sausage of our choosing.  Mine was 75% lean pork and 25% fat, seasoned with hot red Calabrian pepper, sweet red Calabrian pepper, coarsely ground black pepper, fennel seed, garlic, and red wine.

Making salami is serious business.  There is no approximating the proportion of fat and lean.  When butchering we separated completely the meat and fat.  These were then recombined in specific proportions based on the requirements of each recipe.

Thursday started off with Chef continuing the bacon that had been salted three days earlier.  The salt and sweet mixture (different for each) was washed off with some sort of alcohol.  The one cured with salt and brown sugar was washed in Jack Daniels, smoked over chestnut wood, then glazed with maple syrup.  The salt and white sugar one was rinsed with Amaretto, smoked over pistachio shells, and glazed with a concentrated coffee syrup.  The salt and honey cured one was rinsed in brandy, smoked over chestnut wood, and glazed with honey.  Each was put in the fridge where they would stay, uncovered, for about a week to allow the glaze to crystallize.  At that point they could be used or vacuum packed and kept in the fridge for up to six months.

The speck was rinsed in grappa, coated with finely ground black pepper, smoked, then put in netting to be hung and aged before use.

On the spur of the moment, mid-morning, Chef took some of the concentrated liquid from Bollito #2, mixed it with orange-zest-infused 97.5% alcohol and some sugar, to make “Jello” shots.  These went in the fridge and appeared at dinner on Saturday.

Chef then made Tonno del Chianti which means Tuna from Chianti.  It is a well-known and beloved pork product that resembles oil-packed tuna.  When butchering the pigs, we carefully removed the flap meat.  This was boiled in a mixture of half vinegar and half water abundantly flavored with onions and bay leaves until fork tender then cooled in the cooking liquid.  It was packed into jars with seasonings and either covered with extra-virgin olive oil or the cooking liquid and processed in a boiling water bath.  We tasted some Tonno del Chianti from the previous production.  I am most definitely making this stuff!!!

The rest of the day was spent stuffing all the salami and our personal sausages.  The ground pork that was left after each of us took our portion for sausage the previous day had been seasoned for soppressata; nearly 20 pounds of it!  A few of us assisted Maria, one of the dishwashers, stuff it into large intestine, as is traditional.  Although Maria’s job is to wash everything and keep the kitchen tidy, she is an expert at curing meat.  A warm, caring and wonderful person she feels like a grandmother though she’s a decade younger than I am.  Apparently, she and her sister kill, butcher, and cure four pigs every year—all within about a week!  I cannot imagine how they do this.  It took four days for 18 of us, not counting staff, to do a pig and a half.

We went to the hanging room to hang the meats that were ready.  Some need to be kept under refrigeration or cured at a warmer temperature before hanging.  Cured meats are given a light smoking two or three times a day for the first four days, or so, after hanging.  They do not taste smoky but the smoke acts as another preservative.

Friday morning we went to the mercatino.  Friday afternoon saw the production of Coppa di Testa (head cheese) and ‘Nduja.  We tasted several different versions of head cheese made a few weeks earlier, all were very good and quite different from anything I’ve had in the States.  The best thing made with all the “bits” was ‘nduja.  ‘Nduja is a spicy, spreadable salame.  Chef’s version is approximately 1/3 cooked meat (mostly from the head), 1/3 raw fatback, and 1/3 Calabrian red chile (both a “paste” that resembles tomato paste as well as dried in powdered form).  Everything is stuffed into a casing and hung to age.

Chef Juan made blood sausage and bratwurst.  Neither was particularly Italian, though Italians do make blood sausages.  Both were great.  The blood sausage was revelatory!  With the main part of class over for the day, several of us stuck around to complete “maintenance” of salumi that had been started earlier in the week.

That evening dinner consisted of all fresh the sausages that we had made, expertly grilled by Chef Juan, and an array of accompaniments.

With Pig Week over, Menu Planning and Execution, our next adventure, was scheduled to start on Saturday at 11 AM.

January 27, 2019

The last few days have been pretty low-key.  Well, except for the exam, that is!

Exam days were Wednesday and Thursday.  We were randomly assigned to one of three groups and scheduled for our exam on either Wednesday afternoon, Thursday morning, or Thursday afternoon.  Wednesday morning was free for all of us.

My exam was scheduled for Thursday morning so I had Wednesday free until a 4:30 PM lecture with Dr. Bill Schindler.  “Dr. Bill” took the salumi (charcuterie) course about three years ago and has since done some collaboration with Chef John.  Dr. Bill, an anthropologist, focuses on understanding human foodways from prehistory to modern times.  You can find out more about him here, and here and here.  He is an enthusiastic and engaging teacher.  I hope to spend some time with him at the Eastern Shore Food Lab.

With my exam scheduled for 8 AM on Thursday, I went to bed early on Wednesday.  I woke up at 3 AM and could not get back to sleep.  Other than not wanting to embarrass myself, I had nothing substantive riding on this exam.  I guess not being embarrassed is motivation enough.  I knew the exam would not really be about recipes.  It would be about technique and process.  That’s not something that can be learned in 10 days.  So, really, I’d been preparing for this exam since I started cooking at the age of 17.  I either had it or I didn’t.  Nonetheless, I have to admit I had performance anxiety.

I had to make Risotto alla Parmigiana (Parmesan cheese risotto), Scaloppine di Maiale con Salsa di Marsala (pork cutlets with Marsala sauce), Spaghetti Aglio e Olio (spaghetti with garlic and oil) and Dinner Rolls with Beet Powder (that turned them fuchsia).  In general, it was designed to be a low-pressure exam (RIGHT!) though there were a few things done to trip us up.  We all had to share pasta cooking water, which was bubbling away on the stove when we got to the kitchen.  The water, however, was not salted.  (Lesson:  taste EVERYTHING!!!)

I was the second one to start dinner rolls after finishing the other three dishes.  When I got to the pastry lab, I was told: “the ingredients are all over there [pointing].”  I started weighing out flour not noticing that another student had removed a second container of flour and put it on a different table (until that student brought it to my attention).  The two flours had different “W” values (a measure of the strength of the flour).  The recipe called for a particular W value, which could only be achieved by mixing the two flours in a precisely calculated ratio.  Although we had learned that flours could be combined to achieve the desired W value, all breads that were made until exam time used one specific flour of the desired W value so I wasn’t even thinking about the need to mix.  (Lesson:  read EVERYTHING!!!)

[Note: Flour sold in Italy is labeled with the W value.  This is not true in the United States.  After getting home I will need to source flour with known W values.  I’m not sure how that’s going to go.]

Having successfully salted the pasta water and calculated the correct ratio of flours, I felt like I had done a pretty good job on my first exam.  I had the afternoon off until the second session with Dr. Bill that evening.

Dr. Bill’s second session involved knapping stone to make sharp stone knives then using our stone knives to butcher a rabbit.  There were also lessons on starting fire using sticks and making rope from plant fiber.  Making a stone tool was essential since we had to have at least one to butcher our rabbit.  Starting a fire and making rope were not essential to the evening’s activities and I briefly assisted one other student with the (failed) fire thing before doing the rabbit thing.

Stone tools are incredibly sharp!  Sharper than my expensive Japanese ceramic knives.  They get dull quickly, though, and can only be sharpened by re-making the tool which I see as distinct disadvantages.  To be sure, if an incredibly sharp instrument is needed, a well-made stone tool will be sharper than any modern man-made knife.  Rarely, however, is that degree of sharpness needed for a cook.  In addition, stone tools often have several sharp sides so it’s quite easy to slice through fingers and hands while trying to cut something else.

Butchering the rabbit was a worthwhile experience and the knowledge gained is directly transferrable to doing so with a metal knife.  It is also a good prelude to butchering a pig which we do in the coming days as part of our week of salumi (charcuterie), otherwise known as dead animal week.  (Chef John turned the rabbits into a fabulous cacciatore for Saturday’s lunch.  The jus from the cacciatore was used as the main component of a quick sauce for incredibly delicious house-made pappardelle [made with 30% whole wheat flour] served as the first course before the rabbit.)

Friday was market day and we all went to the mercatino at 9 AM.  A side-trip to the kitchen/restaurant supply store scored me two large sauté pans perfect for finishing pasta in sauce and several plastic grates for drying pasta, draining cheese, curing meats, and glazing pastry.  I searched and searched Amazon and the Webstaurant store and could not find plastic grates (nor could I find the specific type of sauté pans that I bought, which are made in Italy).

I have now officially started my hoard of items to be brought back to the States.

A quick trip to the liquor store after the mercatino was unsuccessful in securing a bottle of bourbon.  They only had one, Rebel Yell, and it was €50!  I’ll stick with my Jim Beam at €13 until I find something better.  After the liquor store, and a quick side trip for Dr. Bill to buy a present for his wife, we went to a wine tasting.

Fabio, one of the owners of the Panino Lab (which I wrote about in a prior blog), is also a sommelier.  There is a room at the back of the Panino Lab set up for wine tasting.  We tasted four different, and excellent, Calabrian wines.  Fabio walked us through the tasting process and criteria with the first wine.  We then each had to evaluate the remaining three wines and discuss our thoughts.

This has re-kindled my longstanding desire to take the one-month sommelier training course at the Culinary Institute of America in California.  For now, I’ll settle for the wine tasting and pairing lessons that are part of this course.

Occasionally I can identify some of the different flavors in wine; things like ripe berries, leather, grapefruit, and vanilla, for example.  Whenever I do this, which isn’t often and is always in the context of being with a sommelier or wine aficionado who is doing the same thing, Frank (my husband…remember my husband…I haven’t mentioned him in a while) gets a very serious look on his face, tastes and swishes the wine, and then says something like: “Horses galloping through fields of clover” or “Ducks waddling down the hill in a rainstorm.”  So far, he hasn’t quite hit the flavor profile of any wine but sooner or later, who knows?

After the wine tasting, we reconvened in the kitchen with chef togs for a lacto-fermentation lesson.  Dr. Bill decided to demonstrate rather than make it a hands-on session as planned.  He put up three or four different kinds of vegetables to ferment, including sauerkraut.

In the short break before dinner, I put my feet up and enjoyed a glass of bourbon!  The next day, Saturday, was our first completely free day since starting the course 13 days earlier!

January 25 , 2019

I haven’t had the sensation of hunger in days.  That doesn’t mean I’m not eating.  Everything must be tasted.  Raw ingredients are tasted before being used.  Food being prepared is tasted frequently during preparation.  The final product must be tasted before being served.  Food prepared by one of the Chefs is always tasted (or sometimes actually eaten in larger quantities) because it’s being prepared to demonstrate a particular dish or food product.

Weight gain is the side effect.  If one is eating when one is not hungry there is no alternative but to gain weight.

It’s that sacrifice one makes to achieve a goal.  In this instance, the goal is understanding and being able to prepare traditional Italian Regional Cuisine and then to be able to riff on that same cuisine to create new dishes.

One really can’t focus on the weight gain.  It goes with the territory.  Just like medical students, interns, and residents can’t focus on the excessive caffeine consumption needed to counteract the effects of not getting enough sleep.  It goes with the territory, or at least it used to.  (Don’t get me started about the negative educational consequences of substantially reduced work hours for medical professionals in training!  The change was meant to address a perceived problem and created unintended consequences.)

Yesterday we went to Sicily for the day, to see another part of Italy and to taste different food.  We left the hotel at 6:00 AM.  At 6:15 we were at Soverato Dolci for an Italian breakfast: coffee and pastry.  Chef John recommended the Cornetti (croissants) because they were made in house which, he said, was often not the case.  He told me I should have “several.”  I heeded part of his advice and had a Cornetto, but just one.  I chose a Cornetto ai Noci (with walnuts).  I thought it might have ground walnuts on the inside but instead it had a luscious warm creamy walnut filling that started running down my chin.  Someone else had a pistachio cornetto and it had the same type of filling.  A doppio caffè (double espresso) rounded out my breakfast.

We were back on the bus at 6:45 bound for Reggio Calabria and the ferry to Sicily.  The bus pulled onto the ferry at 9:55 AM.  It was a short ride on a beautiful new ferry.  We got off the bus and headed to the café on the ferry.  At 10:05 we were chowing down on Arancini the size of my fist.  They probably provided enough calories for an entire day.

We were back on the bus at 10:20 and at 10:30 the bus drove off the ferry in Messina.  We headed for Taormina, reaching there at 11:15.  There is also a train to Taormina.  The train drives from Calabria right onto a special ferry (one with train tracks, of course) and drives off after reaching Sicily continuing on its way!  One never gets off the train.

After a couple of group pictures in Taormina we were on our own until 12:50 (theoretically), at which time we were to meet for lunch.  Seven of us headed for the Amphitheater.  It was built by the Greeks in the 3rd century BCE and subsequently expanded by the Romans.

We headed back to our meeting place a little late but before we got there, we saw another part of our group sitting outside a bar with a round of Aperol Spritzes at 1:00 PM.  Mariana, Chef Juan’s wife, was with the group.  Already late for lunch, Mariana managed to massage lunch plans and we all got a round of Aperol Spritzes before making it to the restaurant (some of us with Aperol Spritzes in styrofoam cups) at 1:30.  Here we were, in one of the most heavily touristed (and therefore expensive) towns in Italy, a town that has been a tourist destination since Roman times, and an Aperol Spritz cost only €6.50!  Bowls of nibbles came to the table free of charge.

Lunch started with individual antipasto plates of three cured meats, three cheeses, caponata, fried eggplant, and olives.  The first course was Pasta alla Norma.  The second course consisted of veal rolls stuffed with prosciutto and cheese, rolled in bread crumbs and gently sautéed.  These were served with mashed potatoes.  Desert was tiramisu and gelato.  An amaro and coffee followed.

We rolled out of the restaurant at 3:30 and had another hour to explore the town before boarding the bus for the return trip.  Siesta wasn’t quite over, typically lasting from 1:00 to 4:00 (or 5:00 – hey, this is Southern Italy, after all!) so many of the shops were still closed.

Taormina is known for ceramics and I wanted to purchase something.  The one shop that I was able to get into had many items that were unpriced making it difficult to shop.  As I was about to ask prices, I spied a platter that was priced at €1500.00.  Based on this, I decided there was no need to ask pricing for items that, at best, would have been totally unnecessary impulse purchases.  Besides, I suspect I’ll head back to Sicily in the near future, at a time when I won’t be bringing a steamer trunk full of kitchen equipment home with me!

We were back on the bus at 4:30 heading for the port in Messina.  Before reaching the ferry dock though, the bus made a stop.  Juan disappeared and then reappeared with bags full of cannoli!!!  It was the first food I’ve refused since the program began.  Once on the ferry, nobody got off the bus except one smoker who needed his fix.

Back at the school, not one of us wanted dinner.  We all headed to our rooms.  Exams were scheduled to start the next day and 1/3 of the class had to take a practical exam, the contents of which were not divulged.  I was scheduled in the second group, with my exam a day later.

As you may recall, I promised in my last post to describe what we did in the Pastry Lab the day before we went to Sicily.  Here’s the rundown of what Chef Juan demonstrated:

1. Strawberry Coulis
2. Pan di Spagna (subsequently cut into Savoiardi)
3. Masa Chabon (chocolate coating)
4. Mascarpone Cream (for Tiramisu) starting with the preparation of Pâte à Bombe
5. Salsa al Caffè (coffee sauce)
6. Tempered Chocolate
7. White Chocolate Lace
8. Tiramisu
9. Strawberry Spumone

Chef John kept feeding us during the day we spent in the Pastry Lab with Chef Juan.  At 10:30 AM small plates of bagna cauda and a bread roll flavored with cuttlefish ink appeared.  At 11:50 he sent in seared swordfish with caponata, capers, and a roasted black olive crumble.  At 1:30 we got bollito di maiale with polenta and little cubes of aspic made from a chicken demi.  There was to be one more dish arriving that somehow didn’t.  There were no complaints when it didn’t arrive.

We finished in the Pastry Lab at 4:00 I managed to get in a good walk before pizza making (and the next round of eating) started at 6:00 PM.

Thursday was the first of two exam days.  It was, mercifully, a free day until 4:30 for those of us who were not scheduled for exams.  At 4:30 we had a lecture by Dr. Bill Schindler, an anthropologist and fascinating speaker.  He spoke about our dietary history.  He plans on being here for two more days.  It will be very interesting to see what he presents us.

January 22, 2019

Friday was market day.  The mercatino (little market) in Soverato, about 15 minutes from the school, is truly compact but the quality and variety of the products on offer are amazing.  We bought lots of produce and fish for the school.  Many of us also bought things for ourselves.  Outings to the markedt are planned for almost every Friday.

I bought ricotta infornata, little cylinders of fresh sheep’s milk ricotta that had been baked.  The ricotta was made by the vendor using milk from her own sheep.  She also baked the cheese herself.

After the market we went to a restaurant/kitchen supply store.  A number of students needed chef coats so it was a logical stop.  I looked at the other items on offer and made mental notes about the prices of items that I need…ok “want” not “need!”  Some of the items are not available in the States, like a deep sauté pan with a wicked curve, perfect for finishing pasta in a sauce.  I see two of these in my future.  Other items can be had in the States on the web, like silicone molds and a chitarra for pasta, but being able to see and touch them makes a big difference.  I suspect I’ll be visiting this store most Fridays when we go to the market.

We got back about 1:30 and had lunch.  The first course was a trifecta of braised mackerel, crisped sous vide octopus with cannellini bean puree, and shrimp crudo (made with gamberi rossi) accompanied by a hazelnut puree.  This was followed by a Panzanella (bread and tomato salad) that was made the previous day.

After lunch we went to the Pastry Lab to roll out dough for Pizza Fritta.  Pizza Fritta is deep-fried pizza dough (very thin at the school though sometimes overly thick in restaurants) with an array of toppings that usually includes tomato sauce, fior di latte, and extra-virgin olive oil among others.

Chef made a Nutella knock-off that was way better than the real thing.  It was just a mixture of about 40% melted milk chocolate and 60% roasted pureed hazelnuts with a pinch of salt.  This was used to make a sweet Pizza Fritta along with a generous sprinkling of powdered sugar.  Tasting everything is a necessity!

We had a few free hours before we had to show up in the room with the wood-burning pizza oven to try our hands at making pizza.  I opted for topping mine with ‘nduja, buffalo mozzarella, extra-virgin olive oil and oregano in addition to a bit of tomato sauce and “pizza cheese.”  It was quite the hit, with Chef Juan and two of the other staff reaching for pieces as soon as I cut it.

After everyone had made at least one pizza each, I suggested that we have a pizza play-off pitting Chef Juan against Mariana (his wife) and Ryan against Erlyn.  Ryan and Erlyn are two of the kitchen assistants.  The winner of each round was to be pitted against the other.  Folks started to go to bed early and although we had the first two rounds, we never got to the finals.  This was probably a good thing given that the judging was quite variable.

During pizza making and eating, Ryan was our DJ, playing current international songs but then veering into Italian ones.  L’Italiano is one of my favorites but I couldn’t explain it enough for Ryan to recognize it.  I played it for him the next day.  It has since been added to his playlist which makes me quite happy.

Saturday morning was very busy with prep: chopping, slicing, dicing, gutting and cleaning.  I think I am now an expert at cleaning anchovies having done many dozen (twist off the head and pull carefully to remove the guts while still attached to the head; use a finger to open the fish along the belly; peel out the spine; separate the filets; remove the dorsal fin from one of the filets; remove any remaining pectoral and ventral fins; rinse in 3.5% salt water; line up in a tray; repeat.)

We also had to lollipop frogs’ legs which is kind of like making drumettes from chicken wings.  We also had to tunnel-bone quail which entails removing all bones except the furthest bones in the wings and legs without cutting the skin or making any incisions.  One goes through the neck and body cavity openings that are already present in the butchered quail.  The same technique can be applied to any bird.  I think it’s a great skill to have but I can’t imagine when I’ll tunnel-bone any fowl unless I decide to get into the Turducken business!

All this took 4 ½ hours in the kitchen before our first break.

In the afternoon we were shown the preparation of and tasted (*)

1. *Pasta alla Vongole made with Pasta alla Chitarra con Scorza di Arancia (Pasta with Clams made with Orange Zest Pasta cut on the Chitarra
2. Rana Pescatrice (monkfish cooked in fumetino—a fragrant stock) [we ate this a day later]
3. *Orecchiette con Rapa e Salsiccia (Orecchiette Pasta with Broccoli Rabe and Sausage)
4. Ossobuco (we ate this another day)
5. *Gnocchi Sardi con Salsa alla Erbe (Saffron gnocchi with a bacon, tomato and herb sauce)

Sometime during the afternoon Chef made pistachio gelato for everyone.  We have an entire week coming up where we learn to make gelato!!

For dinner five of us made sandwiches and salad for the group.  The sandwiches were focaccia with cooked ham, salami, buffalo mozzarella, tomato, basil, salt, and olive oil.  Dessert was puff pastry stuffed with pastry cream and topped with white chocolate ganache.

Sunday was another busy day.  We observed chef prepare three types of risotto, each of which we ate prior to 10:30 AM(!):

1. Risotto alla Milanese (saffron risotto)
2. Risotto alla Parmigiana con Porri e Aceto Balsamico (Parmesan cheese risotto with sautéed leeks and balsamic vinegar)
3. Risotto Nero al Mare (cuttlefish ink risotto with seafood)

Chef’s technique is a little different from mine and I will need to try it his way.  He does not stir when the wine is added, preferring to let it evaporate undisturbed.  He keeps more liquid in the rice during cooking than I do.  At the end, he adds cheese and butter, as I do, but his butter is frozen and he uses a classic French technique to “fluff up” the risotto.  I don’t fluff my risotto but I guess I’ll learn!

The Ossobuco from the previous day was finished and served with the Risotto alla Milanese, sprinkled with Gremolata (finely minced garlic, parsley, and lemon zest).

Chef started to marinate the dozens and dozens of anchovies that we had cleaned the previous day.  We also tested a portion of baccala (salted cod) that had been soaking for a few days to see if it was ready to cook but it was still too salty so it went back in the fridge under water.

Chef pan-roasted broccoli florets that had been briefly blanched.  They were later turned into a simple sauce for mafalde pasta that we had for lunch.

The afternoon saw the preparation of:

1. Italian meringue (which is different from both French meringue and Swiss meringue)
2. Caramel sauce
3. Pâte à Bombe (a beaten egg yolk and hot syrup base for many desserts)
4. Glassa Nera (glassy candy coating)
5. Tiramisu (both in a large dish and in a martini glass, which was very cool)

In the afternoon we got to be hands-on again, pulling mozzarella this time.  The mozzarella is aging under fresh water as I write this and will ultimately be put in salt water for a day or so before being used.

All day Monday was spent in the Pastry Lab watching Chef Juan demonstrate the preparation of a number of fundamental pastry-making components (like a fruit coulis and tempered chocolate) followed by the creation of Spumone (not like the American spumoni) and a different variation on Tiramisu.  On Monday evening we had our third pizza session since Friday!  This one involved the use of the electric pizza oven.

It pretty much followed the format of the wood-oven pizza session with each of us making one pizza and sharing, followed by a few additional ones.

I chose to make pizza with ‘nduja, a fried egg, fresh pepperoncino and pepperoncino oil in addition to a little tomato sauce and pizza cheese (as it is called here).  The pizza sat on the table too long as the oven needed to be cleaned so it stuck when getting it on the peel.  Rather than pitch it, Chef Chris made it into a large dumpling-shaped calzone.  It was a big hit.  One of my classmates named it Il Mostro, The Monster.  Chef Juan thought it was the perfect breakfast!

I made another one that did not stick to the peel and came out of the oven flat.  It was equally good but, interestingly, somewhat different in taste and texture having been baked flat as opposed to closed.

In my next post, I’ll describe what we did in the Pastry Lab before the Pizza session as well as talk about our trip to Sicily.

Ciao a tutti!

January 19, 2019

Tuesday was pasta day.  Wednesday was bread day.  This being Calabria, seafood was included on both days.

On Thursday, January 17th, we did a bit of food production in the morning then cooking demonstrations in the afternoon. It appears that we will do much more hands-on cooking in the coming weeks.

On the morning of the 17th we split into two groups .  One group made pasta and the other  made bread. Given the amount of bread and pasta we consume as a group this is going to be a regular occurrence.

Although I feel that I have a lot to learn about making both pasta and bread, I chose pasta because I feel less confident in making it than I do bread. Jumping right in seemed like the best way to tackle my uncertainty.

Most people in the pasta group were told to make plain pasta. Two of us were told to make pasta with orange zest and two with truffles.

I made a batch (about 14 ounces) of plain egg pasta. It was supposed to be truffle pasta but there were no directions given about when to put the truffles in. Besides, the truffles weren’t even out. Before I started making pasta I had to cut a mess of carrots into brunoise—about 1/8 inch dice—so I was coming to pasta-making late in the game and assumed the lack of truffles meant that they went in at the end. So, I just went ahead and made the pasta assuming that if truffles needed to be added first they would have been provided. I figured I would add the shaved truffles at the end. Duh! Pasta dough is pretty firm so I should have realized that this wouldn’t work.

The pasta dough came together quite well. The whole process was easier than when I did it two days previously, which seemed like a win to me even though it wasn’t the truffle pasta it was supposed to be. Armed with instructions this time, I set about making a second batch with the truffles mixed into the flour at the beginning. I absently mindedly started adding the eggs to the flour before adding the truffles then stopped myself. Chef just scooped some of the flour out of the bowl and told me to mix the truffles into that then put it back in the original bowl and continue.

While I was grating truffles on a Microplane, with my back turned, someone decided to grab my bowl of flour and use it to dust the table where they were rolling out pasta. That should never have happened as the school insists on using coarser semolina for dusting work surfaces, not finely ground flour. Besides, the flour was on my table.

There’s no way to recover from this since the flour needs to be weighed out precisely so that batch of pasta went in the trash!

I repeated the process a third time and got it right! I cleaned up my station while the pasta was resting then rolled and cut a sample for chef to taste at his request. The instructions I received were to bring a little salted water to the boil, cook the pasta and give it to him. The only other batch of student-made pasta that got tested was cooked personally by Chef.

I cooked a few mouthfuls of pasta, tossed it with extra-virgin olive oil and a dash of pepper and gave it to him. The texture was perfect but the final product was too salty. It gnawed at me all day because I cook pasta about five times per week and never over-salt it. I chalked it up to using a very small quantity of water and not eyeballing the salt correctly. Later, however, I looked at the ingredients of the fresh pasta that I make at home as well as the brand of dry pasta that I use most frequently. The fresh pasta has about 1/6 the salt of the school’s recipe. The dry pasta has no salt. My salted water compensates for this paucity of salt. Clearly, I will need to use much less salt when making pasta using the school’s recipe.

Cutting the pasta was interesting. It was rolled using a manual pasta machine. Chef wanted it to be rolled on the finest setting, which is almost thin enough to see through. He then wanted it cut on the wider setting of a chitarra. I had heard about, but never used, a chitarra.

Chitarra means guitar in Italian. The device is a wooden frame strung with real guitar strings. Most modern ones are strung for two different widths depending on which side of the device is used.

One lays the pasta sheet on top of the strings and rolls, carefully, with a rolling pin to cut through the pasta sheet. It’s really nifty. I think it’s a lot more fun than cutting the pasta with a pasta machine.

Chef also insists that long pasta, such as the tagliatelle I was making, be cut to “regulation” size. Regulation size is 25 centimeters, or just under 10 inches. After sectioning a sheet of pasta, any piece not regulation size is made into something else like maltagliati, literally “badly cut” pasta.

The afternoon was crammed full of Chef demonstrating different dishes, sometimes three at a time!

That afternoon saw the preparation of the following dishes. Asterisks (*) mean we also ate the dish.

1. *Smoked sweet peppers (used for a salsina)
2. Duck bacon (the initial stages)
3. *Parsley oil
4. *Pan-seared orate (a type of sea bass) served on a bed of potato puree with smoked pepper salsina and parsley oil
5. *Crispy chicken skin (like chicharrones made with chicken skin)
6. Panzanella
7. Caponata
8. *Spaghetti Aglio e Olio
9. Mackerel cooked in vinegar and water with onions (Sgombro)
10. *Roasted eggplant spread
11. Reduced chicken stock (similar to chicken demi-glace)
12. Octopus to be cooked sous vide
13. Marinated pork fillet
14. Bagna cauda

To tide us over to dinner we had grilled cheese (fontina) sandwiches with porcini mushrooms topped with mayonnaise and some crispy chicken skin.

We ended the day with a trip to MOPS a brasserie and birrateca in Catanzaro Lido for Apericena. The word apericena is a mash up of aperitivo (aperitif) and cena (dinner). At an apericena you buy your drinks but food comes out, usually in smaller portions, from which one can make dinner. I had Jack Daniels for €5 a shot. Not a bad price! Later in the evening I heard from Chef Juan that they have some very good bourbons.  They’re on my list for next time.  This is clearly a place to return to!

For those of you who are following the food that is made and consumed each day, here’s the rundown of what we and/or Chef made and ate (*) on January 15th:

1. Northern Italian pasta dough made into:
   • Tagliolini
   • Tagliatelle
   • Farfalle
   • Croxetti
   • *Fornarina
   • Tortellini
   • Agnolotti
   • Capeletti
2. Northern Italian spinach pasta dough
3. Northern Italian beet pasta dough
4. Chlorophyll extracted from spinach for coloring food
5. Meat stuffing for pasta
6. Ricotta stuffing for pasta
7. Mussels to be put into pasta the next day
8. *Gnocchi Napoli with tomato sauce, baked and topped with fiore di latte, basil and garlic oil
9. Salsa Napoli
10. Individual lasagna made in ramekins:
    • Seafood
    • Lamb ragu and wild artichokes
    • Bolognese

Here’s what we made and/or ate (*) on January 16th:

1. Garganelli
2. Specialty rolls:
   • *Cuttlefish ink
   • Walnut and raisin
   • *Sausage and sweet pepper
3. Pasta alla chitarra
4. Focaccia
   • Plain
   • Pepperoncino
   • Rosemary
   • Garlic
   • Pugliese (topped with crushed tomatoes, anchovies, black olives and oregano)
   • Stuffed with tomatoes, anchovies, black olives and oregano
5. Cibatta
   • Plain
   • Whole wheat
6. Honey bread
7. Biga (a starter for yeast-raised products)
8. *Pasta al Scoglio (Pasta from the reef) made with previously prepared mussels and cuttlefish with shrimp added and the cuttlefish ink pasta we made previously

For lunch we were served polenta with pulled braised pork, Parmesan fonduta, black truffle and crispy fried carrots and leeks followed by fish poached in fish stock with chlorophyll (to make it green) and topped with a tomato relish. Dessert was amaretto gelato with crushed almonds on top.

For dinner we were served broccoli soup accompanied by the sausage and pepper rolls followed by lasagna with lamb ragu.

January 16, 2019

The average student gains five pounds (or is it five kilos?) during the three-month “Master of Italian Cuisine” course.  At least that’s what I’ve been told.

It’s not hard to believe.

Our first day in the classroom was Sunday, January 13th and I had barely digested the previous evening’s meal from Al Fondaco.  I was so wound up—and so overly full—from the meal that I couldn’t even get into bed till 1:30 AM.

I groaned when my alarm went off at 7:30.  I groggily hauled myself out of bed and made what has become my daily pilgrimage to Orlando for espresso.

After my second espresso doppio I felt a bit more revived.  Class started at 9:00.

Whereas the first day was lecture combined with tasting foundational components of regional Italian cuisine, the second day was spent in the kitchen watching Chef prepare basic foods—and of course tasting them, with one exception.  Because we ran out of time before tasting olive oils on the first day, we began the day by tasting 8 Italian extra-virgin olive oils from Liguria, Veneto, Garda, Siena, Chianti, Puglia, and two from Sicily.  To make a point, Chef also had us taste “olive oil,” a chemically extracted oil with no olive flavor but a distinct chemical bite.

Here’s how the day went.  Asterisks (*) mean that we tasted the dish as well (please excuse the English and Italian mash-up, it’s kind of how it goes in the kitchen here).

1.      *Simple tomato sauce (this was put into many dishes)

2.      Anchovy garlic paste

3.      *Cotechino on warm bread with a fried egg, spicy mayonnaise (maionese di bomba), and taleggio

4.      *Risotto alla Parmigiana con tartufo bianco (risotto with parmigiano cheese and white truffles)

5.      Salsa verde

6.      Ragu di agnello (lamb ragu)

7.      Salted egg yolks (tuorli di uova sotto sale)

8.      *Spaghetti alla puttanesca

9.      Ragu di sepia (cuttlefish sauce)

10.  *Garlic oil (this is also a component part of many dishes)

11.  Trifulata (truffle sauce)

12.  *Lupara (rigatoni with sausage, tomato sauce, and hot red pepper).  [The dish is from Naples.  It contains rigatoni which remind Italians of the short-barreled eight-gauge shot gun used in Naples.  Enough said!]

13.  *Scallopine di maiale (pork scallopine) with Marsala, served with shaved lardo (salt pork)

14.  Peperonata

15.  Bollito di maiale

16.  Ragu Bolognese

17.  *Seared cubes of mortadella served with bruschetta topped with Bomba alla Calabrese (spicy conserved vegetable spread)  [Just in case we were hungry!]

18.  *Trofie pasta with lemon, olives, shrimp and bottarga (this dish is referred to as “Profuma di Mare” [perfume of the sea]  by the staff)

19.  *Vin santo and cantucci (biscotti)

The last task of the cooking day was to start dinner for the group.  The main part of the meal was Pollo alla Romana (Chicken Roman Style).  It’s a simple but delicious dish of chicken cooked with sweet peppers and tomato puree then finished in the oven with grated Pecorino Romano on top.  We prepared about 50 chicken thighs since they are the best cut for braising.  I got to prepare half of them!

After class Mariana and Chef Juan helped me complete the paperwork that I needed to submit in order to schedule an appointment to finalize my visa.  The difficult part was completing the multi-page 178-section questionnaire for which there were three separate instruction manuals!  Luckily most of the 178 questions did not need to be answered but it took Juan (a former attorney before he became a chef) to understand the nuances.

Mariana and I then went on a journey.  The first stop was to a tobacco shop (seriously) to buy the €16 stamp that needed to be affixed to the paperwork.  Then we went to a shop selling magazines and office supplies to have copies made of all the documents I had been given by the Consulate General in Los Angeles (in case the originals went missing on their way to the Questura) as well as my ENTIRE passport.  The Italians are serious.

Every page of my passport needed to be photocopied including all the blank ones and the outside cover.  The woman at the shop kept looking at me and indicating that it seemed foolish to photocopy blank pages.  I couldn’t really disagree but those were the directions.  Mariana just threw her hands up and the woman continued photocopying, making a very neat booklet, all stapled together.  This only cost €4 which was worth the amusement value of seeing an Italian criticize Italian government bureaucracy.

Once the photocopying was done, I could complete the question on the form where I had to indicate how many additional sheets I was submitting.  Since the shopkeeper photocopied my passport double-sided, she and Mariana had a discussion about whether the correct number was the number of pages or the number of sheets.  Both agreed it was physical pages.

The next stop was to a photo shop to get 4 passport photos.  This was quick and efficient and only cost €7, about half the cost of 2 photos at Walgreens.  Then we were off to the post office to submit the paperwork.  Yep!  The Post Office is the intermediary but first I needed more Euros since the fees could only be paid in cash.

Unfortunately, the ATM in the lobby of the post office was out of service but there was one down the street.  Neither my ATM card, nor Mariana’s would get the automatic door to open.  Luckily it only took a few minutes for someone to come by with an ATM card that would open the door.

With €200 in my pocket we went to the post office.  Once inside, Mariana said I could fill in the date on the application form.  Juan had cautioned not to do this until I was certain that I would be submitting the documents.  Apparently, any error invalidates the documents and requires a whole new packet to be completed.

A few minutes later, Mariana and I were in front of the clerk who set about reviewing everything.  She calculated the fee to be €100.42.  I handed her €101.  She gave me back a few coins then handed me €30.  Apparently, the fee is divided into two parts.  €70.42 goes with the application and €30 goes on the envelope as postage.  REALLY?  €30 for postage!

A few minutes later I handed her back the €30 for the postage.  I’m not really sure why she couldn’t have kept it in the first place, especially since she quoted me the full amount at the outset.  Mariana was familiar with this process.  When the €30 was put in front of me, Mariana said to “leave it” because I would be “giving it back” in a few moments.

We walked out of the post office less than 15 minutes after we had entered and I had an appointment on February 4, 2019 at 9:00 to go to the police station to start the next step in the process.  Mind you, I already have a visa in my passport from the Consulate General in Los Angeles.  All of this is just the process of “registering” with the Questura!

I walked to dinner with a glass of bourbon in my hand, the first since getting to Italy, celebrating having negotiated just a tiny bit of the Italian bureaucracy.

One of these days, I’ll tell you the story of actually getting the visa in Los Angeles—a saga that stretched across several months and two continents!

Ciao for now.

January 13, 2019

It’s close to 11:30 PM on Saturday, January 12th as I’m starting to write this post.  I finished my first Calabria Dispatch a few hours ago.  At the time, I planned to start Dispatch #2 after dinner with the goal of finishing and posting it on the 13th.

That’s still the plan but this evening has put a sharp turn in my planned story line about massive food consumption.  Stick with me and you’ll see why.

Last time I stopped my tale at 2:00 PM on Thursday, January 10th.  We had just gotten back from lunch and started in the kitchen.

From 2:00 to 5:00 one cured meat product after another was inaugurated in the kitchen.  These included three types of pancetta, proscuittino, cotechino (which I prepared and wrote about in my first blog of the new year), zampone, duck prosciutto, rabbit and duck liver paté, cured rabbit leg, bratwurst and kielbasa (yes, I know this is a course on Italian cuisine), and on and on.

Each of the ground meat products was subjected to testing, meaning a portion was cooked, divided up and passed around the room for all to taste.  We discussed what adjustments needed to be made to the seasonings.  Often a second round of testing ensued before the mixture was declared perfect and put in casings.

Cotechino was among the most challenging to test because it contains about 30% pork skin.  Pork skin requires hours of cooking, even when ground finely, to be palatable.  The texture of the quickly-cooked cotechino resembled ground up hockey pucks.  We knew this would be the case.  The point was to taste for the perfect balance of seasonings, not the texture of the finished product.

Half the cotechino mixture was made into a fat sausage (cotechino) and half was stuffed into a pig’s trotter to make zampone.  Zampone means trotter.  Zampa means paw.  Zampa also happens to be my mother-in-law’s maiden name.

At 5:00 we took a break and were served platter upon platter of cured meat products, such as head cheese, that had been made in the previous few days along with enough wine to wash it all down.  For good measure, bowls of pasta carbonara were brought out.  Round about this time, those folks who had succumbed to Mariana’s encouragement to have two panini at the Panino Lab at lunchtime were regretting their decisions.

We resumed around 5:30, marching down to the curing room where meats were hung to cure.  It was absolutely fascinating to me to see Chef Juan light olive branches to lightly smoke all the meat products.  He said that in Calabria it is traditional to smoke all aged cured meat products for an hour twice a day for four days.  Never in my life had I heard this.  It certainly does not appear in any of the tomes on salumi that I have read!  This is a topic that I need to explore further in the coming weeks.

In addition, though not strange to me, is that the Institute only uses salt to cure its meat products.  In the States we would call these “uncured” because we use the term “cured” to mean that preservatives such as sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite have been added as well, ignoring the fact that salt is, itself, a “cure.”  Curing with salt alone is generally believed to be too risky for the home cook.  Sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite are much more effective antibacterial agents than salt alone.  They also help meat to maintain a more attractive reddish color.

We went back to the kitchen and continued with meat production until shortly after 9:00 PM, at which time we were told to prepare for dinner!  Mind you, we had already had a stupid amount of food for the day.  Dinner consisted of pounds and pounds of fresh sausages that had been prepared over the previous days, salad and bread all lubricated with the ever-present wine.  We ended with gelato and cake.

The previous night, Chef Juan had announced at the end of dinner that if we had brought any “gastric protectant” with us (i.e. some sort of antacid or acid blocker) we should start taking it that night in preparation for “massive eating” the next day.  He did not exaggerate.

I’ve read many articles about chefs who travel to experience local cuisine to develop new ideas for their restaurants.  The stories always involve eating the same stupid amount of food, if not more.  There’s really no way to taste food without swallowing it and one bite is often not enough to fully appreciate the taste and texture.  In the cooking profession, eating is research, and the more research one does, the better.  Periodic over-indulging goes with the territory.

Friday the 11th was a relatively mellow day.  The few remaining outgoing students and the few incoming students who had arrived were invited to lunch at La Tavernetta, the restaurant at Baia dell’Est, the hotel at which we’re staying.  Lunch started with two gorgeous crustaceans, langoustine tails, I think, but also possibly a species that doesn’t get exported.  They were wrapped with cooked angel hair pasta and flash fried to crisp the pasta and cook the seafood.  It was a brilliant preparation.  There was also a portion of monkfish wrapped in seaweed and cooked.  Next was seafood ravioli in a light tomato sauce.  The meal ended with deconstructed cannoli and Amaro del Capo, one of scores (probably really hundreds) of amari made throughout Italy.

For dinner, the ever-growing group of incoming students went to the pizzeria from my first night (the one with the automatic defibrillator).  I had Pizza Diavola.  Sliced fresh hot peppers were strewn on the pizza before baking.  I confirmed that the fat in cheese is a perfect vehicle for capsaicin.  Every bite of pizza was searing in spiciness, even if that particular bite didn’t contain an actual slice of hot pepper.

Saturday the 12th was another easygoing day.  Lunch again was at La Tavernetta.  We started with an exquisite stew of miniscule octopus and tomato served with simple grilled bread.  It reminded me of the way my family prepares baccala, only more refined in taste.  The next course was a fish fillet rolled around and in seasoned breadcrumbs and sautéed.  It was served on a puddle of golden sauce made from pureed potatoes.

We were hypothesizing about the source of the yellow; turmeric or saffron, perhaps.  (When you’re with a bunch of food-obsessed people, every dish gets dissected and analyzed.)  We were assured by Orlando (our waiter…and the morning barista) that the sauce contained neither and that the yellow color came from the potatoes and bread.  To be truthful, the bread on the table had a golden hue but none of us could comprehend how the sauce could be so rich in color without some ingredient with a substantial depth of color.  The mystery remains to be solved.

Dessert was gelato or at least I think it was.  My brain was starting to shut down at this point.  We finished the meal with another local amaro, Amaro Silano.

I went for a long walk after lunch.  That, coupled with not having eaten the last two bites of my fish, made me feel virtuous and ready for the official welcome dinner at Al Fondaco.  It is a rustic restaurant but one of the most perfectly maintained facilities I’ve seen in Italy.  The same attention to detail was lavished on the food which was beyond compare…and all of it local.  But if Thursday was a day of stupidly “massive eating,” I have no words to describe this meal.

We toasted with an Italian sparkling wine then each of us got a plate of cured meats, cheeses and pickled eggplant, all made in house, accompanied by an onion jam and fruit conserve.  Jugs of local red wine were put out and then the tables were littered with antipasti; so many that I can’t remember them all.  They included stuffed eggplant, stuffed zucchini, suppli, savory fried dough, meatballs with large amounts of pecorino cheese in them, stuffed tomatoes, braised individual artichoke leaves with a meat topping and cheese gratin, meat croquettes and pork saltimbocca to, quite literally, name just a few.  There was still silverware left on the table so we knew more was coming.

Two pasta courses followed.  One that I would call strozzapreti but that’s not the Calabrese name, served in a veal ragu.  The other was zucchini and pecorino ravioli in a light tomato sauce.  Next came porchetta with a salad to lighten things up!  Dessert consisted of a fresh cheese with a sweet syrup, tiramisu, sliced fresh fruit, walnuts, local mandarin oranges and, interestingly enough, lupini.  I’ve only ever had lupini served as an antipasto or as part of a casual lunch.  These were not as salty as I am accustomed to and went quite well with the remainder of the dessert course.  We ended with limoncello, Amaro del Capo and espresso.

We were all subdued on the drive back to the hotel.  Nearly comatose is probably a better description.  Luckily, I continued to take my Pepcid after Chef Juan’s injunction a few nights earlier.

I wish I could say that I would be able to forego food for a few days but I know that won’t be possible.  We report to the kitchen at 9:00 on Sunday in chef’s attire.

And so it begins…

January 12, 2019

I arrived on January 8th.  It was 29 hours door-to-door: Santa Fe to Albuquerque to Dallas to London to Rome to Lamezia Terme to Località Caminia in the town of Stalettì.

The trip was totally uneventful except for a few moments of anxiety near the end.  Although the flight from Rome to Lamezia Terme was full, there were only about 10 of us who checked bags.  Standing around the baggage carousel, one by one the others peeled off.  I was the lone passenger left standing in an empty terminal except for the very concerned airport official who only spoke Italian.  She kept disappearing, apparently to see if there were other bags being unloaded.   Each time, she came back looking more dire.

Finally, my bags appeared.  I was relieved.  So, obviously, was the airport official!

I exited baggage claim prepared to discover that my driver had left, thinking I hadn’t made the flight.  Luckily, he was there and I breathed a sigh of relief.

The ride to the hotel, Baia dell’Est, was just under 45 minutes.  I arrived at 7:20 PM and was met by Mariana, who manages logistics for the Italian Culinary Institute.  She took me to my room, showed me the bottles of water and wine the school had left for me in case I needed reviving after my journey, and told me that she was taking the current group of students, attending a five-day course on making salumi, to dinner at 7:50 if I wanted to join them.

I tore through my suitcases, flinging clothes everywhere, to find the bits I needed to make a coherent outfit.  I jumped in the shower, dressed, and was ready to go at 7:45.  I’m not quite sure how I managed that.

We piled into a mini-bus and went to Il Ghittone, a local pizzeria.  Juan, Mariana’s husband and second-in-command chef at the Institute, said the tradition was to order beer, fried potatoes, and pizza.  Absorbing the flavors of Italy is a big part of the total immersion experience of this three-month culinary expedition, so I was not about to argue with tradition even if beer isn’t one of my favorite beverages.  Fried potatoes and pizza, on the other hand, are a completely different story!

The menu consisted of four pages of Calabrian-style pizza, plus two pages of other stuff that I didn’t bother reviewing.  We were here to eat pizza, after all!  In addition, there was a separate menu of Roman-style pizza which Juan suggested we not order simply because he thought we should taste the hyper-local food.  I was more than happy to oblige, ordering Pizza Calabrese with tomato sauce, mozzarella, schiacciata, ‘nduja, and black olives (with pits).

Schiacciata (meaning “squashed”) is similar to sopressata, but weighed down during curing to make it flat.  ‘Nduja, a spreadable salame that has been a favorite of mine since I discovered it several years ago, can contain up to 50% Calabrian chile peppers!

I also requested pepperoncino, hoping to get the minced, salted, and oil-packed Calabrian peppers that I had on my last visit to Calabria.  The waiter, clearly pleased that someone had asked for pepperoncino, brought two bowls.  They were sliced fresh pepperoncini, however.  Nonetheless, I made a substantial dent in them.

We lingered at the restaurant for more than two hours.  Getting back to the hotel around 10:30, I had no choice but to put everything away since my clothes were strewn on the bed and all around the room from my frantic pre-dinner quest for sartorial appropriateness.  Sleep came at about 12:30 AM.

At 7:30 the next morning, I was at La Tavernetta, the restaurant at Baia dell’Est, for breakfast.  Orlando, the barista, revived me with four double espressos!!!

With my class not scheduled to start until the evening of January 12th, I spent the morning responding to email and other tasks.  I had lunch with the “Salumi Students” at the school.  The afternoon became a jet-lagged blur after the effect of Orlando’s espresso wore off.  I think I napped, but I know I appeared at the school for a simple dinner of chicken, cauliflower with cream sauce, and salad.

Wine!  Did I mention wine?  Bottomless bottles accompany all meals (well, not really breakfast, though I think if one asked, it would appear!).

On January 10th the Salumi Students did an outing to a local mercato in Catanzaro Lido followed by a trip to a kitchen/restaurant supply store.  I was invited to accompany them.  Afterwards, we had lunch at the “Panino Lab” where one designs one’s own sandwich which is then made to order.  I really liked my choice (semolina ciabatta, schiacciata, pecorino fresco, n’duja, and arugula) so much that I can’t wait to go back!

We arrived back at the school at 1:30 and convened in the kitchen at 2:00.  Chef John Nocita, who runs the school, invited me to participate.

Stay tuned for the next installment.