Day 7 Umbrian appetites Cooking class No. 4

Technically for me, this was more a Masterclass than a cooking class.  Guiseppe, you are a legend. I know you haven't read this blog, yet somehow you are a mind reader, having instructed and demonstrated ALL of my favourite dishes. I am now ready to go home equipped with so many recipes, new ideas and hopefully, some of the right skills. Tony has embraced all of the cooking experiences and is a whizz at pasta making, so between us we 'should' be able to recreate some authentic dishes.

Whilst this lesson didn't offer as many 'hands on' opportunities it offered much more in the way of instruction and demonstration. 

This way we covered more recipes and learnt more 'tricks of the trade' and were free to ask Guiseppe about any of the dishes he'd cooked for us during the week.

Guiseppe had already prepared the pasta dough for the Capellata. The real lesson was in filling the pasta and shaping in into little 'caps'. This was quite a challenge. In case you're interested, this dough was made just using egg yolks. I have lost count of the number of pasta dough variations. You can see how orange this dough is as it only contains egg yolks (24) and flour.

The filling was 3 parts ricotta to one part cooked spinach with plenty of Parmesan to taste.

Our attempts were lovely and rustic:

You might remember the individual lasagnes from a previous blog. These were made in disposable foil containers, about the size of a muffin tin. We used a large sheet of fresh commercial pasta, placed it in boiling water for a minute to soften. We then cut a strip off the end (about 5cm wide), then cut this strip into 3 squares. The large lasagne sheet was placed into the greased foil containers, with its 'ears' sticking out, meat sauce added, layered with a square of pasta, then a dessert spoon of ricotta, the second pasta square, more meat sauce, third square of pasta, finished with ricotta then you fold over the pasta 'ears' and bake, sprinkled with cheese. Guiseppe's recipe has a side of rich cheese sauce. 

One more of my favourite recipes included the very gorgeous chocolate molten pudding which is very easy to make. The trick is to freeze the puddings and cook frozen to maintain the 'lava'. This makes preparing ahead very easy. Using good quality dark chocolate (70%) is also important to avoid the puddings being too sweet.

Lastly, we made the melt in your mouth Porcini Mushroom Flans. I have promised to type this recipe up and will place it under the recipe tab on my blog. I may be home when this happens though.

I have now officially eaten too much. It has taken me 7 weeks to feel this way. Sure there were a few times when I was determined that at the next meal I would eat less but it never happened. There was always something new to be surprised by that needed to be tried. 

We are now on a fast train to Rome to spend our final 2 nights before flying home. When I look back on the photos from the earlier part of our holiday it seems we have been away much longer. There are so many 'chapters' to our holiday and it is almost time to write the final one. 

Rome, you have one last chance to impress!

NB. I can't resist posting a few happy snaps.

The above photo was in the mountains just before the truffle hunt. Clearly I am missing Lenny!

Tony is missing him too.

It's a cliche I know but I've finally found the time to stop .... And smell the roses.

And the stinky truffles !