Our last say in Italy! Hard to believe our trip is half over! We were picked up and taken to the school at 8am today. We had a lot of courses to prepare. Our chef today was Chef Ricardo, who is the director of the IFSE school program. We were broken down into groups and each group was given a specific course to prepare. A little like what we did at Cook Street. I was in charge of bread. I waited while he told the other groups what do do. Rosanna, of course, had to interpret for us. The chef sent me downstairs with Valentina who was very nervous about being with me as she speaks only a little English. I told her, is ok, parlo Italiano un picolo. That made her laugh. She helped me make the bread dough using a biga or sourdough starter. The dough they mix is stiffer than what we did at Cook Street but the bread turned out well. I made plain rolls, rolls with walnuts (noci) and grissini or breadsticks. I did a lot of kneading by hand!
At 1pm, we sat down to a lunch of Parmesan custard with spinach cream, pumpkin gnocchi, Braised beef cheeks with a brown sauce served with steamed potatoes and zucchini, and a dessert of chocolate Pots d'Creme. It's interesting, they seal many of there vegetables in a vacuum seal bag and cook them in the vacuum bag. They are seasoned and buttered or oiled then steamed. Apparently there is more flavor and less fat used in cooking this way. I have seen this method in magazines but not in real life. They did turn out well.
After lunch, we had a little ceremony in which we were given a certificate on lovely paper and also an IFSE apron. They have been very nice to us. We got back to the hotel about 3:45pm. A group of us are going out to dinner downtown tonight, apparently a nice restaurant vs a little trattoria. I am going to take a nap first as I woke up this morning with a sore throat. Don't want to run myself down! Buona Serra everyone!!
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