Giulio’s Pasta Experience Cooking Class

Due to our late night, Alex and I didn’t show up for breakfast until 9:45am and our cooking class was scheduled to start 45 minutes later. We both tried to eat a small breakfast in preparation for our upcoming lesson. Donatella, our instructor for the day, arrived at 10:30a and first showed us how to make Cantucci (a type of biscotti that is usually served with a sweet, Italian dessert wine after the main course). Although Giulio provided the recipes for everything that we were going to learn how to make, I made sure to take video clips as Donatella went through each step. Cantucci consists of flour, egg, sugar, almonds, vanilla, and yeast. It is baked once, cut in angled pieces, and then baked for a second time until it hardens like a biscotti.
During our next lesson, Donnatella taught us the art of making homemade pasta. Of course, she made it look ridiculously easy. We learned that mixing the dough is quite simple, the art enters the picture when the dough is ready to be kneaded and stretched into a thin, flat sheet. We prepared two types of pasta. Tagliatelle (flat and long pasta) and ravioli stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach. Giulio taught us how to prepare two simple, yet flavorful sauces. The marinara sauce over the tagliatelle included stewed canned tomatoes, olive oil, red onions, fresh basil, salt and pepper. The raviolis would later be tossed with a butter sauce mixed with fresh sage from the garden. In order to make the long taglietelle pasta, we folded both sides of the flattened dough towards each other and then cut the dough in rows. Once unfolded, the long strips were unveiled.
After the cooking lesson, Pierre (the spice guru) allowed us to taste his various homemade dried spices with pecorino cheese, olive oil, and red wine. Of course, we bought multiple jars for ourselves and as gifts. We also tried a very traditional snack when Christina presented their fresh sage from the garden, which she had flash-fried then salted. It was something that I never tried before, but surprisingly enough I thought it tasted pretty good. Giulio prepared the meal that we helped to make, while Pierre was giving us the spice tasting. Each dish was bonnisimo, but after the final dessert course we were stuffed and ready for a nap. Our intention was to wait until the heat died down for the day, to go for another run. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Three hours later, we woke up from another lovely siesta.
After a few days of touring around Florence, we felt like we mastered the ability to find our way there from La Limonaia. In addition to that, Sunday is usually much less crowded and parking is free and more readily available. That combination convinced us to drive into Florence, so that we didn’t have to worry about catching the last bus to Bagno a Ripoli. We parked even closer to the Ponte Vecchio than we did yesterday and made our way back to Morris’s Internet café. After spending some time there to catch up on our emails and make phone calls, we found Trattoria Nerone and shared both pizza and caprese salad for dinner. The walk back helped to work off some of the day’s meals, and after the 10-minute drive back to the hotel we were exhausted. When I return home, I definitely plan to test my pasta-making skills. If all goes well, they will be sure to impress.

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