Italy del Giorno

Thanksgiving 2010

From Blog Photos

It was shame that had me rolling out dough for pasta while the turkey roasted away in the oven.  I was ashamed because during a  Skype video call to my parents the night before Thanksgiving, I found myself speaking to my father as he rolled out and cut the tagliatelle for Wednesday night’s pre-holiday dinner.  He proudly told me it was the THIRD time he’s made pasta since he celebrated retirement with a visit to Italy that included a cooking class (organized by CIU, of course!).  This from a guy whose only prior unsupervised culinary achievement was toast and a fried egg for breakfast every morning.  I’ve attended and evaluated many cooking classes, cooked professionally in restaurants, and am a veteran cook of countless dinner parties but was convinced until recently that making and rolling out my own pasta was some sort of voodoo art that only the mothers and grandmothers of Italy are capable of practicing.  Not anymore – if he can do it and I can do it, then you can do it too.

From Blog Photos

Rolling out the dough on a dry, lightly floured wood surface.  I got my tools in Italy but my father recommends Fantes Kitchen Wares Shop in the Italian market in Philadelphia.  He used the 23″ wood rolling pin with knob handles, the wooden pastry board 28X22.5, and the wooden collapsible pasta drying rack for his tagliatelle.

Gabriella had roasted a medium sized pumpkin to make her pumpkin pie this year.  In the past, she had always carted over a can of pumpkin from the US but with the new baggage weight and piece requirements, every kilogram counts and the cans of pumpkin didn’t make it this year.  This yielded an overabundance of pumpkin puree that I spiced with nutmeg for the filling.

From Blog Photos

To each dollop of pumpkin I added some fresh goat cheese, brushed egg between the dollop, and then folded the pasta sheet over to make the raviolis.

From Blog Photos

I cut them with a round cookie cutter.

From Blog Photos

After they came out of the water I tossed them in a pan with brown butter and fresh sage leaves.  The wine for this course was an excellent Sauvignon from Vigna Traverso in Friuli.

To put together an itinerary that includes learning how to make pasta like an Italian – contact us: info@ciutravel.com

This entry was posted on Friday, December 3rd, 2010 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Food, Great Plates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.