Rome - Cooking Pasta & Tiramisu

1 November, 2024

One of the things we immediately agreed upon when planning our visit to Italy was a cooking class of some description. I did a fair amount of research before focusing on TripAdvisor/Viator recommendations, then we discussed the merits of various offerings. Pizza? Pasta? Tiramisu? Gelato? With or without wine? Sauce-making or not? So many options! Do we do one class or two?

We finally settled on a single class with pasta and tiramisu, offered by "Eat, Walk, Italy" starting just after noon. We made fettuccine, ravioli, and tiramisu, the restaurant supplied the sauce. If you want to search for the class on Viator look for "3 in 1 Cooking Class near Navona: Fettuccini, Ravioli and Tiramisu" As of my writing this is the direct link.

Tiramisu carnage

We had a blast, ate amazing food, and completely warped my sense of what constitutes really good pasta. Now all I do is dream of making and eating fresh pasta. Well, at least the eating part. The making is fun, but the eating is more fun!

We met our fellow classmates in the square in front of the restaurant and waited for someone to invite us in. One couple had just arrived from the states and were on our trans-Atlantic cruise – how's that for a small world moment? At the appointed time Furio, our instructor, invited us in and showed us to our work area. In a stroke of good fortune we four cruisers would be in our own class unless there were some last-minute additions. 

We made the tiramisu first, so it would have more time to set up in the refrigerator while we made our pasta. It's amazing how few ingredients are involved in a dessert with such depth of flavor;

Marscarpone cheese, eggs, sugar, coffee, ladyfingers, and cocoa. That's it. (Unless you want to soak your ladyfingers in a bit of hooch, that is.) A little effort, a little technique, and some time complete the recipe. Variations are popular, and limited pretty much only by your imagination.

Prepared for Pasta making

After the tiramisu was sent off to chill in the refrigerator we moved over to the pasta station. 

Flour (very good 00 flour) an egg, and just the tiniest pinch of salt.

That's all it takes to make pasta, at least as far as ingredients are concerned. Yes, I was skeptical. Certainly there was more?

Transforming those ingredients into a reasonable incarnation of pasta isn't difficult, you can learn the basics in a matter of minutes. Being able to produce good pasta takes persistence and patience. People spend years dedicating themselves to becoming masters of the art, and it is truly an art. If you're so inclined, take the time to watch Chef's Table: Noodles on Netflix. Evan Funke will open your eyes to things you've probably never thought of when it comes to pasta. Where did all those shapes originate? Why do they even exist? How are they made? As is the case for so many things we take for granted because they "just are" or "have always been like that" there is a story and a purpose behind each of them. Mixing, kneading, rolling, and smoothing out a sheet of pasta with your hands is a visceral experience that connects you to all those who have ever made pasta. While my skills are still pedestrian, at best, the satisfaction I achieve grows with each incremental measure of improvement.

Pasta making!

After getting our ball of dough the correct texture (as proclaimed by Furio) we rolled it out in a mostly rectangular shape. From the middle to the edge, flipping from side-to-side, smoothing with our hand, adding small sprinkles of flour, and repeating until it was either "just right" or "just right enough" to move on to the next step.

When our sheets were properly rolled out we divided them, half for noodles, half for ravioli. A few folds and a few cuts produced a serving of noodles. The other half was folded, stuffed, sealed, and cut to make ravioli. Machine-made ravioli, with it's uniformity of shape and filling, is wholly unimpressive. I now understand that it takes training in magic spells to achieve this level of perfection with hand-made ravioli. Uniformity in size and shape insure even cooking, so "rustic" <cough> ravioli might require a careful eye when it's on the stove. After we finished our ravioli we chose the sauce for our noodles and our plates were sent to the kitchen for cooking! We washed up and moved out to the patio to wait.

Finished product

We didn't have to wait long (fresh pasta cooks quickly) and each of our dishes were presented to us. 

Wow.

The texture was amazing. The sauce was quite good (not Roscioli good, but good) and the cheese was delightful. We nibbled away at our plates, wanting the experience to last as long as possible. When we finished our pasta the tiramisu hit the table, and it was magnificent. I've made it since we returned home but haven't been able to produce the same results – yet. We overstayed our welcome and were finally asked to leave to make room for the next class to enjoy their dishes.

We were only a few blocks from a chocolate shop we were interested in, so we walked off our meal and did a little shopping. We passed several gelato shops but there's no way we could have eaten another bite at that point. I plotted a path to a convenient Uber pick-up spot and we strolled by the Pantheon on the way to our ride back to the hotel. All-in-all a wonderful day.

Pantheon