day 10 :

tuesday, 23 may

Class didn't start until mid-afternoon today, so we spent the morning walking around the beautiful villa grounds, reading and taking photos. We discovered where the peacocks (one male, one female) live, but we never managed to find the elusive cuckoo. Every time we seemed to get a little closer, it sounded like it was coming from somewhere else. As we walked the grounds, we also ran across a duckery, filled with dozens and dozens of tiny little ducks who were quite scared of us, and ran as one enormous mass to the far reaches of the pen.

We asked our gracious host Paolo (whose family co-owns Villa Giona) for a light lunch recommendation, and he mentioned a nearby place that is one of his favorites. He particularly likes it because they hand-roll their pasta. Our classmates Ron and Carolyn joined us for the adventure, and off we went in search of Trattoria Caprini. After a brief drive, we arrived in the tiny town of Torbe, parked the car near the church Paolo had mentioned, and started looking around. Eric noticed the trattoria's sign half-buried under weeds in the back of a parking lot, as if someone tore it down from the front of the building to thwart tourists like ourselves from finding the place. We looked around for another minute, and even though the town was tiny, we had no idea where this place was. Fortunately, some townspeople were sitting around chatting, and they were able to point us to the restaurant: you have to go into door number 9 — one of several in the building — and walk another twenty feet inside before you see a doormat labeled Trattoria Caprini at the base of a flight of stairs. Well, this confirmed our suspicion that they had no interest in advertising their presence!

There was no menu, but our waiter recited our options for primi, secondi, and contorni. With a rough mix of English and Italian we managed to order primi and secondi, and agreed with the waiter's suggestion that he bring out a few side dishes of their choice for the whole table with our main course. We were not disappointed. The pasta course was an amazing hand-rolled tagliatella. Once the secondi and contorni plates arrived, all free space on our table disappeared. We each were served a meat entrée, and then we shared four different side dishes plus a salad — much more food than we had anticipated. So much for the “light” lunch idea! But we were pleasantly surprised when we got our bill — a mere 87 euros for a bottle of wine and this enormous, delicious multi-course meal for four. We haven't managed to find a better value than that restaurant since. They were also very hospitable. As we were leaving, our waiter gestured to usher us into their wine room, where he showed us their enormous old bread oven, which they no longer use. We thanked him for the wonderful meal, and headed back to the villa happy and full.

Class began mid-afternoon with an hour-long interactive session on making cheese. At first, we guessed that we were going to make mozzarella (which we did once before at a cooking class in Napa Valley, and it's relatively quick to make), but soon realized that the cheese of the day was ricotta. Our teacher, Dr. Lorenzo Maggioni from the Consorzio del Monte Veronese, gave us an overview of cheese making, and explained how there are just a small number of variables that you change in order to produce all of the thousands of cheeses made in the world today. The primary variables are type of milk (raw or pasteurized), animal that the milk comes from (cow, goat, sheep, buffalo), what the animal ate (which affects the color and taste of the cheese), fat content (whole, skim, part skim), and the type of rennet (acid) used to start the cheese making process. Lorenzo added rennet to the warm cow's milk in front of each of us, and we let it sit for a few minutes so that it would thicken. We then made cuts in the curdled milk to allow the whey to come to the surface; the more cuts you make, the harder the final cheese product will be. After draining off the whey, we pressed the cheese into a form and let it solidify further. Before long, we each had a little basket of ricotta cheese in front of us! Since we hadn't added salt, and Lorenzo had added a lot of rennet to speed up the process, you wouldn't want to eat a lot of it, but it was ricotta nevertheless.

We next headed into the kitchen and were greeted by Valeria and Margherita Simili. Le Sorelle Simili (“the Simili sisters,” as they're called) are 70-year old fraternal twins from Bologna who worked in their father's award-winning bakery, assisted Giuliano's mother Marcella Hazan at her cooking school, and also ran their own cooking school. So, we were excited to spend the evening learning how to make breads and pastries from such renowned teachers. We had no idea what we were really in for! We learned a lot about baking, but the highlight was watching the sisters interact with each other — at one point, while the two were quibbling about one thing or another, Margherita turned to us and said, “We must decide everything together.” They had an unlimited supply of energy. (“We're young, with old makeup.”) They were so entertaining, we could just picture them on their own cooking show on The Food Network, or even a parody of them on Saturday Night Live. We were in stitches the entire evening!

They showed us how to make the most amazing rolls, called pane casareccio, twisted into every imaginable shape. We thought perhaps it was simply a demonstration until they suddenly turned to us and said it was our turn to try our hand at bread-making. Everyone looked at each other with skepticism that we could produce such intricately shaped bread, but got to work building a flour well in which to mix the eggs. On the side of each well was the “salt house” which is an indentation in the flour used to hold the salt separately before mixing it in. This prevents the salt from making direct contact with the egg, which causes a chemical reaction that can burn the egg. The trick with bread making is to mix in just the right amount of flour so that it is not too wet and not too dry. Margherita came around to each person to check their progress (to Eric: “Okay, Gianni, what do you have here?”). When Eric's dough was too dry, she made a face and explained that it's easier to deal with dry dough well before you've mixed it too far — this dough was past that point. So, she smeared some water over the top and said, “It's a little bit unpleasant, but go on…”

Eventually, we had enormous trays filled with rolls of all shapes — more bread than we could ever eat (the next day, we found out that the chickens enjoyed our gourmet bread). Everyone got to try their hand at making a number of different breads throughout the evening: breadsticks, pizza dough, focaccia, and more. When it was finally time for dinner, we nearly fell into our chairs with exhaustion. But dinner was amazing! As we ate, everyone was debating which recipe they were going to make when they got home. After dinner, when we'd normally head up to bed, Margherita came in to remind us that they had one more demonstration for us in the kitchen. With droopy eyes, everyone headed back into the kitchen. Usually, Valeria is the one making sure the behind-the-scenes details come together, while Margherita gives the demonstration, but this time Margherita let Valeria take the reins. Valeria recognized the turn of events and declared, “My moment of glory!” Valeria was so enthusiastic that Margherita eventually stopped her with a long, drawn-out, “Bastaaaaaaa!” (“Enough!”) By the end of the night, every one of us was exhausted. The Simili sisters, on the other hand, outlasted all of us — we're told that they were baking late into the night.

Tuesday Dinner

• La pizza
• Pane casareccio - peasant bread
• Le streghe (the witches) - crackers
• Grissini torinesi tirati - breadsticks
• Focaccia Genovese - flat bread from Genoa
• Torta di riso - rice cake
• Angelica - a light, sweet, fruit-filled bread

Tips from the evening:

• General tips on bread making
  • Don't break your flour ring or the egg will get out and you'll need to run and catch it!
  • Let the egg and flour amalgamate slowly.
  • Use just one hand to make the bread, otherwise how will you answer the telephone if both of your hands are covered with sticky bread mixture?
  • Use the soft part of your palm, near the thumb, to knead the bread.  Don't press down with the full weight of your palm, or you'll destroy the dough.
• La pizza
  • If you like a lot of tomatoes on your pizza, cook the pizza with just a thin layer to ensure the bread gets cooked, and then add more tomatoes later.
• Focaccia Genovese
  • A variation is to use rosemary or sage, or even cooked onion, in the dough or on top of the bread.
• Torta di riso
  • When testing a cake's doneness with a cake tester, make the test hole in the crust a little wider so that the top crust doesn't “clean” the tester as you pull it out.
• Angelica
  • Be sure to frost it the moment it comes out of the oven.

Tuesday Snack

• Prosciutto crudo - cooked in vegetable broth
• Raw prosciutto made from pigs with tusks
• Robbiola - cheese made at high temperature with little rennet, and then aged for 30 days
• Le streghe and pane casareccio - the crackers and bread that we baked

Served with these wines:

• Soave Corte Giara, 2005. Corte Giara is Allegrini's second label.
• Pinot Grigio Corte Glara, 2005
• Traminer Aromatico, Collio D.O.C., Venica & Venica, 2004
• Moscato d'Asti Prunotto, 2005

Other things we learned tonight:

• A good way to taste-test something (in the presence of friends, of course) is to hold your nose while chewing food or sipping wine, then allow yourself to breathe through your nose at the moment that you swallow.
• When you swallow wine, if your mouth waters afterward, then the wine has a lot of acidity. Sweetness lingers on the front part of your tongue.
• To improve your ability to identify wine tastes, try drinking water with salt, water with sugar, and water with lemon.

Cool tool:

• We used a flat wooden spatula for stirring instead of a curved wooden spoon to ensure that we could reach everything in the bottom of the pans.