September 2016 Chef Training Course had another cooking practice, “Northern Italian Cuisine 2”. Just like they did in their last cooking practice, students learned to make another kind of fresh pasta called “tagliatelle”. A student with Italian cooking experience handled the pasta machine efficiently to beautifully flatten the dough. And then another experienced student cut it up into equal widths. What a great teamwork they showed! Meat for cutlet was tenderized by lightly beating it. Students then flatten the meat. The meat is very big so it is important to cook it carefully and evenly. Every group shows a great teamwork in every cooking practice. It’s one of the valuable […]

Chef Training Course (September 2016 class) had its second cooking practice, “Tuscan Cuisine 2”. Students learn cooking using their five senses; checking taste, aroma, temperature and brownness of the food. Students were eagerly asking questions to the professor during and after the practice. Roast Veal Shank As Tuscan cuisine is famous for its meat dishes, today’s main dish was Roast Veal Shank. Prof. Francesco said, “Make sure you tie the string firmly. Roasting it slowly at a low temperature makes the meat more tasteful.” Hungry students could not take their eyes off from the tender and juicy cut of chunky meat on the table. Students also got excited about the […]

Today students had a cooking practice on “Making Sausage/Sausage Dish” lesson. Sausages are very popular throughout whole Italy. In this lesson students worked with 3 different kinds of sausages from Toscana, Abruzzo and Napoli. Napoli sausages taste hot and look very reddish in color. The farther south you go in Italy, hotter dishes are preferred in order for people to endure the hot weather. Abruzzo sausages contain a small amount of herbs, adding distinctive flavors to them. Toscana sausages have neither hotness nor herbal flavors; they are naturally flavored in general. At restaurants, sausages around 1.5 meters are twisted into smaller sausages. At factories, sausages as long as 10 meters […]

Q. What are the characteristics of today’s dishes? A. Today’s dishes are “Special Dishes for Special Occasion”. These traditional dishes are gathered from all over Italy. Since it takes a long time and a lot of efforts to prepare this full-course meal, you need to calculate the preparation time for each dish accurately to finish everything at the same time. At least 1 month of basic training is necessary to prepare this full-course meal. 1-week students can never complete it. You need to apply all the basic knowledge and techniques you learned in the previous month’s training. 2016. 5. 9 Hatakeyama

Vegetarians and vegans are now widely accepted throughout Italy. Both vegetarians and vegans do not eat meat, but vegans are stricter about avoiding all animal products including fish, milk, cheese, eggs and broth. There are various reasons for being vegetarians/vegans – for one’s health benefits, religions or political beliefs. Professional chefs must understand various food cultures and eating habits correctly in order to cope with such requests. Students also took a very important lesson about food allergies. Chefs and servers must be extremely careful not to touch any allergens before the dish is served in front of the customer. In addition to the sanitary cautions, professor taught students points to […]