Hiatus in Oregon

Happy Holidays Blog Followers! I am on hiatus in Oregon at the moment. Hopefully, I will actually see most of my blog readers over the upcoming weeks. I look forward to starting up the blog again when I return to Rome which should be about mid-January. I will send out an email to let everyone know when I'm back to writing. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time out of your busy schedules to spend a few minutes reading what I have to say.

I wish all of you the happiest of holidays, with good friends, good food, and most of all, joyous times with your families.

With love,
Irene

Pasta Making

This is the third and final blog post about cooking school. I don’t mean to drone on about it, but I just have to tell you about pasta making day. We start the day with something new for breakfast; fresh ricotta on toast with jam. Very delicious. (I’ve since bought it from one of my cheese men and shared this wonderful delicacy with Dennis.) I try not to eat too much of it that morning as I know it will again be a big eating day. Maybe just one more bite before we go out the door. I do need energy for making pasta after all.

Susan, our host, drives us to a restaurant way out in the middle of nowhere called “Maria Fontana”. It is a wonder that anyone ever eats there. It takes us nearly forty five minutes of countryside driving to arrive. As it turns out it is listed in the Gambero Rosso, the Italian version of a Zagat dining guide. The owners of the restaurant are participants of the slow food movement; where everything is purchased from local vendors, made from scratch, and cooked at the moment it is ordered. Waiting for us is the pasta lady. Her only job at the restaurant is to make pasta. She speaks not one word of English, so Susan translates for us. Everything is done by approximation, but of course turns out perfectly every time. She has won awards for her “maccheroni” which is similar to what we think of as angel hair pasta.

We watch her expertly crack eggs into her “well” of flour, and begin mixing by pulling the interior of the “wall” of flour to the center being careful never to break the wall and thereby losing her eggs. She kneads and kneads and kneads, and I point to her arms, noticing how strong they are, then point to my own puny arms. She smiles in acknowledgement of her strength. I can’t imagine doing this all morning every day, but this is her life and she is quite proud of it, and you would not want to arm wrestle with this lady.

Eventually, she creates several small disks of dough. But rather than whipping out a rolling pin, she fetches an unpainted broomstick. She will work each small disk into such a large, thin circle of dough, that no ordinary rolling pin would have worked. The 6 inch disk quickly becomes a 30 inch paper thin circle under her fast moving broomstick. She folds the huge circle of dough over her broomstick, carries it over to another table to dry, turns to us, and motions that it is now our turn.

Barbee and I look at each other…..okay, it’s our turn. She hands her broomstick to me, and turns to fetch another one for Barbee. It is obvious that Barbee has more rolling pin experience than I do. She quickly begins on her disk, and slowly it widens. Mine is growing, but somehow, it is also growing quite wrinkled. The pasta lady reminds us that we are supposed to be making circles. I point to my wrinkles (in the dough), and shrug my shoulders in question. She grabs my broomstick, works her magic and my wrinkles quickly disappear. I get back to work and the wrinkles quickly reappear. Oh well.

The pasta lady shows us how to fan fold our giant circles so we can get ready to start slicing into ribbons. She grabs a very sharp knife and begins to slice her stack into thread-thin “maccheroni”. I try to take a picture, but her hand is moving so fast, I have to reset my camera to “sport mode” in order to capture the action. We begin to slice our stacks. No need to use the sport mode setting. She reminds us that we can just cut the pasta wider, and make fettucine out of it instead.

After the maccheroni lesson, we get a gnocchi lesson from the owner of the restaurant. The pasta lady says goodbye, and we thank her profusely for her time. The owner brings in a large plate of potatoes which she has already cooked, and roughly mashed. She slides the mass onto the pasta making board telling us that she uses a combination of red and yellow potatoes. She sprinkles the pile of potatoes with a good dose of grated parmesan cheese. She tops this with a generous helping of flour. Again, the kneading begins. This time, there is less finesse involved. It’s more like working with Playdough. After it is well kneaded, we slice chunks and roll them along the board into “ropes” just like we used to do as kids with pink and blue clay. When the rope is about the thickness of a finger, we simply chop off little chunks and the gnocchi is done!

We then get to walk through the restaurant kitchen, watching all the preparations that are going on. We see the brother of the owner cleaning mushrooms fresh from the forest. Another employee is making a “pancake” in a sauté pan out of potatoes and chicory with lots of garlic and olive oil. They show us giant jars of antipasti that they make themselves: pickled zucchini slices, pickled carrots, and eggplant. We see the huge pot of pasta water that is always boiling waiting for a customer’s order of fresh pasta which only takes a few minutes to prepare.

We are told to go wash up and to take a seat at the table that has been prepared for us, as we now must eat what we have made. Today, we have worked hard for our lunch, and we are ready to eat. We start with some ravioli they made earlier, served with a very simple tomato sauce…..so tender; it melts in your mouth. Next up, comes our gnocchi, also served with tomato sauce. Darn! We make good gnocchi! We are getting full after two pasta dishes, but they insist on serving us a third with the other pasta we made, this time served with a fresh mushroom and asparagus sauce that is so different and delicious. Oh no, they’ve forgotten to serve us antipasti…..don’t worry, they’ll go get some for us. Out comes a platter with the various pickled vegetables, and oh yeah, you should have some sautéed chicory as well. Here, eat this too.

It’s time to go. Barbee and I can barely move. We thank the restaurant owners for their generosity and time, take lots of pictures, eat the parting pastry they insist we taste, and finally roll out the door. It’s time to move on. We have a train to catch back to Rome, but we still have an artisan chocolate shop and an olive oil mill to visit! The olive oil mill is simply fascinating. The smell of pressed olives assaults our nostrils the moment we enter. We see the giant bins of olives brought in by various olive growers. We get to watch the huge stone wheels turn to grind the olives, and witness the beautiful green oil spewing from a spigot. We now know what “cold pressed” means, we can talk about an olive oil’s acidity and we know how to warm it with our hands for ultimate flavor. Our final stop is the chocolate shop where we purchase WAY too much chocolate, and make a mad dash for the train station. We’ve had a very busy couple of days. We learned a lot, ate a lot, and met a lot of great people! I highly recommend cooking school in Italy!

We continue. Lunch being over, Barbee and I roll our way out the door and into the van so we can take a look at the nearby town of Rieti. The upside (one of many) of paying for cooking school is that you don’t have to do the dishes. Rieti, like many towns in Italy has its charm concentrated in its old city center. Susan shows us the marker which denotes the very “center of Italy”, an old church with a lovingly restored crypt area, and she points out to us other interesting little tidbits as we walk along; the benefit of having a local person as your tour guide. After stopping at a grocery store for pignoli (pine nuts) which Chef asked us to pick up, and a wine shop where all three of us purchase several bottles each, we head back to the house for our dinner lesson.

Upon arrival there is Chef Maurizio again waiting for us with all ingredients for dinner laid out. We start by making an orzo and chick pea soup. This is not the pasta orzo as I know the word “orzo” to be. It is a grain similar to pearl barley. And of course he does not use canned beans. Susan has been presoaking dried chick peas and kidney beans overnight as per his instructions. He has already cooked the presoaked beans over a low flame for about 45 minutes with a little salt. In a soup pot over high heat, sauté chopped onion, carrot and celery in extra virgin olive oil along with a whole garlic clove, and half of a dried chili pepper. Set a tea kettle of water on the stove to boil. When the vegetables begin to brown, add 2 large ladles of stewed tomatoes to the pot. Add 150 grams of orzo, about a cup of hot water and some salt. Lower the heat to simmer. After about 20 minutes, add another cup of hot water. When a lot of the water is absorbed, add the cooked beans with their cooking liquid. After simmering another 15-20 min, add another 2 cups of water. Simmer and taste for seasoning.

Next up on the menu is Pollo alle erbe Sabinese or Chicken with Herbs Sabine Style. This was my favorite dish. See the recipe column for details. I was so excited to make this when I came back, but I must admit I was a little disappointed when I did. I’m having a hard time finding canned stewed tomatoes. Every time I think I’ve bought them, when I open the can, they turn out to be little cubes of tomato with lots of sauce thereby changing the texture of the dish I’m trying to make. When I made this it tasted good, but ended up being a pasta sauce rather than a stew, and it definitely tasted better the next day. I will keep searching for stewed tomatoes but even if I don’t find them, I would make this again.

Our side dishes were grilled pumpkin and swiss chard. The pumpkin, he simply sliced about ¼ in thick (takes a sharp knife and lots of muscle), grilled on the stovetop, and drizzled with olive oil (what else?) just before serving. The swiss chard was very interesting. I always thought chard was a bitter thing, one step worse than cooked spinach. Turns out, it’s quite mild, and when cooked the way Chef Maurizio did, it’s become one of my favorite new veggies. I made it last week and it turned out great.

I went to my local veg market and found a gigantic bundle of swiss chard. I asked to buy half of it. The vendor looked at me like I was crazy and simply shook his head “no”, stuffed the whole thing in a big plastic bag, and charged me a whopping 95 centimes for it (about $1.25). Upon bringing it home, Dennis undid the tie holding it together and it exploded into what appeared to be enough swiss chard for about 20 people. Dennis diligently washed it all…..it being very dirty…….a sign of being fresh from the field, and sliced it crosswise into about one inch strips. It took two large bowls to hold it all. It looked like we were going to be eating swiss chard for a week. I boiled a pot of water, and as I added handful after handful of chopped chard to the water, it shrank and shrank just like spinach does. I needed to serve 5 people for dinner, and there was barely enough!

After it wilts, strain through a colander, and press out the excess liquid. In a small saucepan, bring some water to a boil, throw in a handful of raisins, and remove from the heat to let the raisins soften and plump up. Drain. In a skillet, over high heat, melt some butter, (no olive oil!) add in the drained raisins and a handful of pine nuts. Saute to brown the pine nuts a little, being careful not to let them burn. Turn down the heat, and add the well-drained swiss chard. Stir it around to warm it up, and that’s it. The chard is soft, the pine nuts are crunchy, the raisins are sweet….it’s a lovely combination of goodness. And the nice thing is you can cook the swiss chard ahead, and do the reheating with raisins and pine nuts when your guests arrive. Just be sure you buy enough chard.

Well, Barbee and I managed to eat all of the above, along with bread and wine, on top of the lunch which I discussed in last week’s blog. Truly, a phenomenal eating day! We really felt that we could never eat again. But the next day was our pasta making lesson! And once again, we were expected to eat what we made.

Next week:

Barbee and Irene hit the pasta table with broomsticks. Really!