Josh eventually got used to this work and was able to make well-shaped arancini. Presentation on the dish is very pretty. Professor Francesco faces his students in a serious manner, but many times he shows his friendly smile. All students look very concentrated when cooking, but a relaxing atmosphere surrounds them when cooking practice is finished. These are scenes from the basic lesson of the Wine Seminar. Today’s theme was “carbonated wines”. There are two methods of production; the first one is to get it carbonated after bottling, and the second one is to get it carbonated in a stainless container prior to bottling. Here are some photos from Fresh […]

Today we had a bread-making lesson. Breads come with meals all the time in Italian restaurants. Most of those breads are hard-type, so people prefer to eat them with olive oil or with other dishes. And Italian people never waste breads that became too hard, by using them as cooking ingredients. Various yeasts can be used in bread making. Although you can make nice-looking breads with beer yeasts, they can be harmful to your body if you eat them even partially uncooked. In this lesson, we used the natural yeast that we cultivated from yogurt and honey. It’s very difficult to adjust its condition to work in the surrounding humidity […]

The third cooking lesson was “Southern Italian Cuisine”. Today’s menu: Mushrooms and artichokes in oil Filei pasta with nduja (spicy Italian sausage) sauce Purple eggplant parmigiana Sardine cutlets with Mediterranean sauce Strawberry bocconotto (cupcake with strawberry filling) with strawberry cream sauce Artichokes, which were used in the first cooking practice “Tuscan Cuisines 1”, are again in the menu. Artichokes have the best season twice a year; spring time (February thru April) and autumn time (October thru November). It sure represents the Italian vegetables in season right now. Artichokes (“carciofo” in Italian) can be eaten many ways; raw with salt and olive oil if very fresh, cooked with pasta, deep-fried as […]