Well the title gives you a quick update about my week here in Italy. It was amazing! I guess I will jump right into it and tell you about the first thing. On Wednesday night my friend Angela and I did a cooking class. One of the great things about Syracuse University in Florence is that they offer all kinds of extra-curricular activities for students to do. So Angela and I thought we would take advantage of it and sign up for a cooking class. We went to the cooking class at 6:00 and started the long process. First I learned to make tiramisu, one of my favorite desserts and is so simple to make! The ingredients are simple just like every Italian dish. We just used eggs, sugar, marscopone cheese, espresso, amaretto, and biscuits. After the simple part was over I learned how to roll pasta. We made ravioli from scratch! This is something I never thought I would do. To be honest, I don't know if I will ever do it again because it is a lot of work. Luckily I didn't get put in charge of kneading the dough because that looked way to difficult. But I got to roll out the pasta, and then we stuffed it with our spinach, ricotta and parmesan mixture, and sliced it. Yes, that sounds easy but it was actually a lot of work. We also made homemade butter sage sauce, tomato sauce, roasted red pepper sauce, angel hair, and linguine! After our hard work of cooking for two hours, we all got to enjoy our creations. My favorite was of course the ravioli and tiramisu, but I tried the other pastas at that sitting. I was so full after! What was so great about the class, was that our instructor taught us a lot about the food that made us appreciate it and made us more knowledgeable with Italian food.
Some fun facts I learned from our cooking instructor..
-The word Salary comes from the word salt because people used to pay each other in salt
-Ricotta is not actually cheese because you have to have at least 30% fat to be considered a cheese and Ricotta is only 5% fat. Riccotta comes from the leftover fat from Pecorino cheese. It is called Riccotta because it means re-cooked! Pecorino is called Pecorino because it comes from sheep's milk and the word for sheep in Italian is pecore.
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| Angela and Me rolling the dough |
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| Making the Ravioli |
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| Here are mine and Angela's, not perfect but not bad! |
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| The final product! |
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| and of course the Tiramisu |
Friday, I was able to go to Pisa and Lucca with my art history class. Pisa was fun because I got to take a picture where I looked like I was holding up the leaning tower of Pisa, but besides that it wasn't too exciting. Lucca on the other hand was amazing. I want to live their someday. Apparently so does Tom Cruise because he is possibly buying a Villa there soon. Lucca is a place I want to go back to and run or bike around the walled town.
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| Holding up the Leaning tower of Pisa |
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| Jumping for joy in Lucca |
On Saturday, I went Wine Tasting in Pazano in Chianti, another place I wouldn't mind living. I went with a student tour program called Florence for Fun. We had two Italian tour guides that spent the day with us by taking us on a two and a half hour hike all over Chianti. This was my favorite part of the day. The weather was perfect and Chianti was gorgeous. It looked very similar to Northern California! After the hike we got to go to the Villa of the wine maker and have a fresh meal with different types of wines. Lorenzo, the man who makes the wine explained to us in Italian what each wine was like, then we had it translated to us by our tour guide. We had three different types of wines with parts of our meals. Then we finished with their dessert wine which was disgusting. After that they told us we had to try grapa because the Italians think it helps people digest their food. So we took it like a shot and it was probably one of the most disgusting things I have ever had in my life. I think if you gave me that and rubbing alcohol, I wouldn't know the difference between the two.
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| Sampling the Olive Oil.. I bought a bottle to take home |
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| Danielle, Carly, and Me..All from CU |
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| Lorenzo telling us about the Chianti Classico |
A fun fact from Lorenzo, the winemaker..
-The most expensive part about producing Italian wine is the cork!
Today, I went to the Chocolate Festival in Florence. It was unbelievable. About 10-15 vendors come and set up huge displays of chocolate in Santa Croce. It was amazing how much chocolate there was! I tried arrancia ciocoloto, ananas ciocolto, truffle di coco, e truffle di pistacchio (Chocolate orange, chocolate pineapple, Coconut truffle, and Pistachio truffle) all which were phenomenal and so different than the types of chocolate that we eat in the states.
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| So much CHOCOLATE! |
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| Chocolate tools |
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| "I Love You" |
This week was a great Italian experience. I learn more and more about the place and culture everyday and grow to love it more and more everyday. On Friday I am off to Paris to see Kai for Valentine's day!
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