Not known by a lot of people, and much to her utter embarrassment, Lisa was once #27 in a list of the top 50 Most Influential Food People in America (Martha Stewart was #47!). While I love to needle her endlessly about his, she did bring it up herself to the kids as she opened the first cooking lesson of Project Equator in Florence, Italy. As part of the required core curriculum, all of us are attending at least one cooking class in each country we visit over the year. Not as easy as it sounds, our first class was gastronomically, educationally and experientially wonderful!
In Florence, Italy, arguably one of the best cities in the world to enjoy Italy’s finest tastes, we did not imagine finding a cooking class would be at all difficult. But, much like trying to get a souffle not to fall as it cooks, finding a reasonable class suitable for children that is not over-the-top gourmet is next to impossible. If you’re willing to spend $1,000 for a family to be lead to market, brought to a villa, prepare and cook super-fancy fare and sip spectacularly synchronized wine (Laura, I know you’re mouthing “Yes, Please!”) then you can find lots of alternatives. But, if all you want is to have your kids learn to make homemade ravioli in the birthplace of said delicacy, then you’re out of luck!
Once we realized this, we remembered our role in Home Schooling (really, we’re the teacher?!) and set out to make our own class. It was such a great food adventure, starting at an Italian cooking store to buy pasta wheels, a rolling pin and an assortment of ravioli cutters and ending in a wonderful family meal that left me weeping!
Our menu consisted of the following:
Sausage, beef and herbed ravioli with mushroom wine sauce
Ricotta and rosemary cheese filled ravioli with butter and sage sauce
Tagliatelle with bolognese sauce
Here’s a few shots of the class:
Otto and Jones mixing the eggs and readying the flour for dough making!
The kids combining the eggs with Semolina flour. Notice all our ravioli cutters :-)
Tuck made a hole in the semolina flour in which Otto is delicately pouring the egg mixture!
Wescott using our cool Italian rolling pin to roll out the past dough!
Tuck working the dough for our pasta
Wescott mixing in Oregano into crumbled sausage and ground beef
Jones spooning out the ricotta mixture for his ravioli creations
Tuck needs more pasta dough to do more raviolis!
Tuck loved cutting his raviolis
Our sauces simmering, awaiting ravioli completion!
Jones with his final creations: Star-shaped ricotta cheese raviolis!
Yve with her creations… we chilled them in the freezer for about 20 minutes so they’d hold together when they get boiled
Jones putting raviolis in the boiling water
First course of Tagliatelle and Bolognese sauce; accompanied by Chianti supplied by Artan, our host in Florence
The benefit of Home School is you can drink wine while teaching :-)
Second Course – ravioli with chianti :-)
Wescott with Sausage and Ground Beef Ravioli in Mushroom Wine Sauce
Enjoying the perfect meal made by all of us
Latest posts by Cliff (see all)
- Tech, Glorious Tech! - September 1, 2014
- Hub in Ubud… Hubud! - June 20, 2014
- The Art of Water - June 5, 2014
Where in the World?
Travelers
Cliff Sharples (51)
Lisa Sharples (74)
Yve Sharples (46)
Wescott Sharples (34)
Otto Sharples (47)
Tuck Sharples (43)
Jones Sharples (41)
Janet Frohnmayer (1)
PopPop Aufranc (6)
TeeTee Aufranc (2)
10 Comments