Cooking Classes In Italy

If you have perused my blog you have probably seen

my pizza oven
which we installed in our kitchen 

when we remodeled a few years ago.  (Follow this link
to see my post on the oven, or click on the post on the
sidebar to see the kitchen remodel post.)
We had the

chance to go and take a week long cooking class

in Tuscany offered by the distributer of the oven

here in America - Mugnaini Ovens.

Talk about the opportunity of a lifetime.

Andrea Mugnaini, owner of Mugnaini (moon -ya-eeny)

Pizza Ovens offered a one week cooking class to 

owners of her ovens which she imports from Tuscany.

We stayed in a quaint countryside resort which had a special

detached kitchen with 3 wood burning ovens and one

gas fired stove on which we cooked everything.

 There were 22 of us in the class, held just outside of
Florence in the Tuscan countryside.

Chef Alessi, a native of Tuscany was our chef.

Mornings were spent taking walks through the Tuscan

countryside.  How lush and green.

Then off to the kitchens by 10:oo am

to prepare 6-7 dishes for lunch.

 This was our typical lunch spread.  You quickly
learned to eat just a spoonful of everything.

We ate our lunches outside.  This day we had made

roast suckling pig and ate it at the bacci ball court.

 Afternoons we were off touring, meeting the
famous singing butcher, Dario Cecchini in Panzano.
He fills his butcher shop as he sings classical Italian
songs or quotes from Dante's Inferno.

with the meat he cut for us we returned and made this
famous bistecca fiorentina, a 2 inch steak highly
seasoned with fresh herbs and garlic

and roasted over coals in the wood burning oven.

 We also went  to the factory where our  Valoriani pizza ovens were
made.  You see Valoriani ovens in many pizzerias here in the
states that have wood burning pizza ovens.

We toured a centuries old olive oil factory.

And we enjoyed beautiful Tuscany or swam
in the resorts pools or took a nap.

 Then by 5:00 we were back to the kitchen to prepare
 7-8 courses for dinner.
We learned that bread in Italy has traditionally been
made one day of the week, filling the bottom of the
oven with loaves and then using the bread throughout
the rest of the week, that is why so much of their recipes
use bread - they learned to create recipes with the
leftover bread where freshness didn't matter - bruschetta,
panzanella, and bread soup.

In the wood burning ovens you begin with the hottest

fire and you can broil as we are here charring the peppers,

next the heat is perfect for pizzas as you want an oven

around 650 degrees on the floor for that.  Next as the oven

cools you can bake and finally after hours of cooling you

can slow bake like the suckling pig.  It isn't just a pizza oven.

This is the traditional type oven people have cooked in

for centuries and the kind loaves of bread were found

in when they uncovered Pompei.

Each day featured a different meat - 

cooking with fish one day, meat another, poultry another

and pizza only on one day.

We would finally settle down for another feast,

truly, with a table that fit 24, seated outside,

under the Tuscan sunset.

While we were there, we took the train to visit my

husband's cousin 

Tonya Hawkes

who is a freelance high-end luxury handbag and shoe designer.

I just adore her fanciful drawings.  

Just imagine the

process of going from drawing to finished product.

She flies all over the world to procure the leathers

and metal hardware she needs.

She studied design in high school in Issaquah,
a suburb of Seattle and at Bellevue College
 and then moved to New York to study illustration.
She graduated with a BA in Technical Design.

She began her career at DKNY and eventually
became their design director.

An offer from Furla got her to move to Bologna
Italy, she moved back to New York after a few
years to work for DKNY again but missed her life
in Italy and has now been there since 2005.

She is a very successful freelance designer,
designing for Sergio Rossi (Gucci's luxury line),
Elie Tahari, Botkier, Coccinelle, and Tommy Hilfiger BV.

Next week we are off to visit Tonya in Bologna, Italy and she

has arranged for us to have some
  cooking classes

which I can't wait to share with you.  

First we stop in Paris.  Oh, I wish we had more time

but we are grateful to be able to squeeze this into our

busy schedules.

My youngest daughter just graduated and
 received her 1st year certificate
from
Culinary School.

 She will continue on next year and
complete the 2nd year, so we decided to bring her
along so she could take the cooking classes and
taste the wonderful food of Paris and Italy.


I can't wait to share this trip with you from Paris to
Bologna, to cooking classes, and who knows
where else we might traipse off too - Maybe Venice.

I will be sharing this with
 Metamorphosis Monday
Wow Us Wednesday
Tablescapes Thursday
Foodie Friday