We arrived in Rome late morning and made it to our hotel (about an hour ride) around noon. After checking in at our hotel, we met with the concierge from our tour company. The company we used (Monogram) arranged all our travel, hotel, and provides us a tour of each place. After settling in, I broke the first rule of overnight flights and took a nap while Mom wandered the neighborhood looking for a snack. Our room is like a small apartment without a kitchen. We have a separate living area and a bathroom off the front entry.
We pulled ourselves together and took a taxi to another neighborhood for our cooking class. The title of the class was Meatballs & Ravioli. There were 8 people in the class, a chef, and an interpreter. We all hit it off right away. One couple was from the Albany area and one woman was born in Massachusetts.
We started with meatballs. We used very simple recipes for both items. We took turns mixing and rolling meatballs and put them directly into the simple tomato sauce Caterina (our chef) made. All of us took some time to process that we didn’t fry or brown the meatballs first. Mateo (our interpreter) told us that it’s old school to make meatballs the way we were all used to. Cooking them directly in the sauce saves time and is less clean up. Minds blown!
While the meatballs were simmering, we got to work making pasta dough. It was really cool to make it completely by hand. While we were making the dough, we were struggling to keep it from sticking to things but also once we were kneading it, we needed to move it around quickly for some chemical reaction with the gluten to happen. It completely changes the feeling of the dough. We rolled the dough out to be paper thin. While we were rolling the dough, Mateo came to check on me and my “Italian hands”. A few people can tell I’m Italian- American and I have to explain that I’m learning to speak Italian but don’t know much yet.
After rolling out the dough, we cut it to size and put little dollops of ricotta and spinach down before folding the dough over and sealing it up. Each pair in the class cooked their ravioli separately so we got to eat what we rolled out ourselves. Catarina finished off the ravioli with a butter & sage sauce. It was delicious. We sat around the table to eat everything and we were all stuffed.
Most of us walked back to our respective neighborhoods together and discussed how ashamed we were the way we had been cooking with so many ingredients. We also talked about how great it is to travel.
We went to bed early because we were TIRED.
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