Buon Appetito!

Friday I learned how to cook an authentic Italian meal!  We made an antipasta of ratatoiulle, first dish of homemade fettucine, second dish of meatballs and chocolate souffle for dessert!  I have even more respect for Italian women now because it was hard work!  As beginners it took us about five hours to prepare the whole meal.  Our teacher, Andrea, was incredible.  He spoke excellent English and made it really fun for us to cook.

The first thing we did was to prepare the sauce for meatballs.  We used extra virgin olive oil, celery, onion, carrots and dry white wine to add some flavor to the tomato sauce.  We let that simmer the entire time we were cooking.  The next thing we did was cut vegetables for the ratatouille dish.  We used seasonal veggies: potatoes, zucchini, carrots, red pepper, onion and eggplant.  The pan looked like a rainbow of colors!  We added olive oil and chicken stock to them and I mixed it all together with my hands!  We baked that for a long time while we did other things. 

We made sauce for the fettucine using chopped prosciutto, butter, bread crumbs and asparagus. (yummy!) To make the meatballs we mixed pork and beef, parmesan cheese, eggs, breadcrumbs, leftover bread soaked into milk, salt and pepper.  They were fun to make and reminded me of cookie dough…  haha We rolled them in flour after we formed them and put them into the pan of tomato sauce. 

While all of that was going on we made chocolate souffle!  Andrea had an awesome machine that whipped the eggs for us to make them lift and give rise to the chocolate.  We melted the chocolate and added it to the eggs, then I poured the mixture into little cups… very carefully! haha  We of course used only “real” dark chocolate, Dad

And then we got to the super fun part of the lesson… making homemade pasta!   We made a bowl of flour to crack eggs into.  We then whipped the eggs while slowly adding the flour to make dough.  It was the coolest thing I have ever seen.  I hope it works out when I get home!

You all are in for a treat now that I have these Italian cooking skills!  Maybe I shouldn’t have told you……

                         

 

 

 

Besides cooking I also learned:

you get salmonella from egg Shells, not the actual eggs. (now i can consume raw cookie dough without fear- win!)

barrett looks 25

wine made in this area is from vineyards that grow in volcanic soil

people from michigan can speak Italian without their northern accent

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