Skip to main content

Sorrento Cooking Class

We lived like true Italians today. Woke up, cooked a huge meal, ate that huge meal, took a nap then started over again. The whole day was full of great pleasures for the both of us and so fulfilling! Literally!

We started the cooking class at 10am this morning. It was held in this huge kitchen at the resort we are staying at. Chef Mina was our teacher and she usually has an interpreter but she didnt today which was fine because we thought her English was pretty good. She also knew German which Kyle knows too so that was helpful! She was from Germany originally and then moved to Italy so German is her first language then Italian then English.

We both got aprons to wear and started with making a pizza dough from scratch. Mina used live yeast which is something I've never worked with before. Kyle and I both took turns kneading the dough. He was hesitant at first but he did good! Mina covered the dough ball and put it in the oven to rise. After that we made the marinara sauce. Kyle helped with that. They put a huge clove of garlic in the oil, uncut, and let it simmer there to flavor the oil. Then they poured in a plain tomato purée and tore up some basil for more flavoring and that was it. Mina told us that a good sauce doesn't have a lot of water in it so letting the water evaporate is key. You don't want to get a pasta dish with water at the bottom of the plate.

Next we made pasta from scratch. We both had bowls of flower with an egg, oil and water to knead into a paste. The big tip Mina kept telling us was to clean the counter with the dough as you knead it. We were going to use this dough to make raviolis. Mina had prepared a cheese filling from ricotta and mozzarella cheese to put in the raviolis. She taught us how to fold and cut them.
After that we took out the pizza dough to make tiny pizzas with. We shaped these cute little 3 inch circles of dough that Mina threw in a pot of oil to fry really fast. When they were cooked Kyle and I topped them off with the marinara sauce we made, mozzarella, parmesan and basil. They were little bite sized pizzas! She also fried up a few of the raviolis too.
When we were done with this she told us to take the plate and the Prosecco back to our room to eat it while she cleaned up and prepared for the next part of the meal. It was beautiful outside and we had a little patio at our room so we ate our lunch out there and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine and orange and lemon trees that were everywhere on the resort. They even had trees that were a mix of both lemon and orange on the same tree! I couldn't believe that, it was pretty cool. The food was molto delizioso!!
When we were finished and back at the kitchen, Mina had everything ready to make tiramisu. I used her hand mixer and to whip together the cream and marzipan cheese with eggs and sugar. She had little bowls for us to layer the lady fingers we soaked in coffee and the cream I made. Then we topped it off with cocoa powder and she put them in the fridge for later.

We watched her cook the sea bass in veggies and oil. Her knife skills are amazing, I'm pretty sure I would loose a finger if I tried to cut like her. She ha is go sit at the table while she finished preparing the fish. She first served us the raviolis we made with the sauce that were melt in your mouth delicious. When we were finished she brought out the sea bass that also was like butter it melted on your mouth. Lastly she brought out the tiramisu to finish the meal. Mamma Mia! We were stuffed!!

There was still a calzone left that she forgot we had made with the left over pizza dough and another tiramisu so she wrapped those up and have them to us to take back to our room for later. After all that cooking and eating we knew why Italians take naps during the day!! That was the next thing on our agenda!

♥ Mae

Labels:
Location: Sorrento Province of Naples, Italy

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bringing the Cooking Lessons Home

We left the hotel at the Neapolitan time of 10ish or 11ish and headed back to the town to find some breakfast. We parked in another paid parking lot so Kyle was happy. After breakfast we looked in a couple of shops after to see if we could find a ravioli cutter but still no luck. So weird. It was so nice out again, such good luck with the weather. We found another cute look out area that was apart of the "public gardens" we found in the guidebook at the hotel. It was just a little area with benches and the look out, not many flowers or garden like things.  When we were walking back to the car we saw this sign on a wood shop and I had to take a photo for dad. I thought it was so clever! Still on a mission for a ravioli cutter we headed towards Pozzuoli to try and go to their "Costco-Like" or "Walmart-Like" stores they have. One is called Leroy Merlin and the other is Auchan. The one we went to was apart of this huge mall. Kyle and I h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Baking Around goes to Italy

Since I couldn't be here for Kyles actual birthday, I made him a cake today instead! Today was the first day I went out on my own. I accomplished ordering a cappuccino and going to the market all by myself! Such an accomplishment. I loved going to the market and looking at everything. I'm pretty sure I was asked like 10 times if I needed help because I would just stand there and stare at all the packaging. This is what I bought to bake a cake with, they even had candles too! It took me about an hour to figure out how to use the oven though. I pretty much took the whole thing apart (not the first time I've taken an oven apart) to find out that you need to light it with a lighter. Luckily the internet was working today so I also went online and searched for the manual for about 30 minutes. Once I decoded that I was ready to bake a cake! Now baking in another country, not terribly difficult...but baking in Kyles kitchen?! Thats another story. The poor guy doesn't reall...
1 comment
Read more

Building a table

So these are some of the things I do all day while I'm home alone when Kyle has to work. I usually go down to the corner cafe then go over to the markets and get what I need for dinner that night or any other random things we seem to need. If its not raining I'll go walk around the neighborhood and get lost and find my way back. This all needs to be done before 1 or 2 because thats nap time over here for everyone. All the shops close up for a few hours and go have huge lunches then sleep till its time to open up again for the evening. So today I built a table during those hours! Kyle bought this table from the NEX (the Navy Exchange on base) because the table he had barely fit the two of us, let alone a crowd if he ever had one. Plus his kitchen is big enough and he had gift cards so might as well! They delivered it around 9am and just put it in the kitchen then left. So it was up to us to build it. Well that was a bigger task than I expected when I started opening up the box....
1 comment
Read more