Our cooking class was amazing - one of the most memorable travel experiences yet. Marcello, Rafaella and Francesca are our new Italian friends and we spent the entire day with them (literally 10am til midnight!). Bluone cooking tours
Rafa and Francesca took us through the food market where we bought food for our cooking, then we had an aperitif with Marcello at a great local wine stop.
We took an afternoon break to enjoy the weather and view from atop the La Torre degli Asinelli. What a climb that was, no elevator and rickety, old, wooden steps! But what a view!
Then we re-joined with our friends to head back to their house to begin cooking for dinner. We made several types of pasta and a dinner of typical dishes of Emilia-Romagna. The pasta making was exhausting and it showed us what a true art and skill pasta making is!
The dinner was fabulous - simple and tasty - and surprising nothing covered in tomato sauce. Apparently, sauces are used to cover the taste of bad pasta - but good, homemade pasta is served with simple broths or alone so you can enjoy the full flavor. For example, we had tortellini in broth, pasatelli in broth and toteloni sprinkled only with fresh parmigiana regiano. While enjoying our dinner we truly felt the hard work was paid off.
And dinner was topped off by a simple and delicious homemade gelato topped with strawberries and balsamic - that was refreshing and my new favorite dessert. One quick tip: it has to be GOOD balsamic...i.e. don't go for the big bottle you find in Walmart, look for a tiny expensive bottle and you find it takes very little and the taste is tenfold!
After dinner, we sat around chatting and Marcello loaded us up with maps and ideas to help us modify our tour of Tuscany...and we have since cancelled some previous hotels, extended our car rental and have an amazing tour in front of us - all thanks to Marcello's suggestions!
So, we will post soon and let you know how our trip unfolds! Ciao!
(we will add in links and photos later...the suspense is killing you, we know! haha!)
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