Cooking Class Part 2

It was a little rainy in the morning but that didn't stop us from shopping for our next cooking class with Carmelita.

I love these markets.

Portrait of mother with prosciutto.

The vegetable man was very eager to show us his newly arrived shipment of porcini mushrooms. And at 10 Euro a piece who could resist? Carmelita grabs our precious little fellow.

She then took us to see how the professionals make the pasta. Today these ladies were making gnocchi.

She used the back of a grater to get the ridges that hold onto to all that wonderful sauce.

Then it was back to Carmelita's to get started. We had a full menu to prepare.
First course was a sfumato of asparagus. It's the same dish I had at a restaurant here and Carmelita agreed to teach us how to make it. First you need to make a bechamel sauce and then puree some cooked aspargus with cream.

After combining you add a super duper yellow egg.

Then give them a little bath in the oven.

We then stopped for a little snack that Carmelita bought for us at the bakery. First was a pastry filled with spinach and ham. Mmmmm...

Next was a traditional Bolognese rice cake. Used to be served only on a certain holiday but lucky for us, sold every day now.

Next we made meatballs out of the leftover stuffing from our stuffed zucchini yesterday.

Browned them...

Unmolded our sfumato. Perfetto!

And garnished with meatballs and tomato sauce. It was even better than the restaurant version!

Onto the next course. Rosettes which is a little like a sideways lasagna. You'll see. We lightly sauteed our gorgeous porcini.

Then we rolled out the leftover pasta from yesterday. (This was much easier than making tortellinis!)


We layered each sheet with bechamel, porcini, ham and fontina.

Then we rolled them up and arranged them in a baking dish sideways, like so.

Half hour in the oven and there you have it. Cheesy, hammy, mushroomy rosettes!

Next course (because we really need another one at this point) was a Bolognese pork chop.
It was browned,

covered with prosciutto and parmesan (what else?)

And then fried and steamed until melted. Wowee.

For dessert we made a Bolognese chocolate cake. Whip eggs,

melt chocolate,

toast almonds,

whiz almonds,

mix together,

bake,

cut in diamond shapes, as is traditional, and serve. Gourmet Magazine, eat your heart out.

We were in a food coma for a good long time after this meal. We learned so much in these classes. Highly recommend that anyone try them. Grazie mille, Carmelita!