Tuscan Cooking Class

Today (Monday)'s adventure was a Tuscan cooking class.  The cook is the mother of the woman who owns the villa, but neither of them speak English, so the all of the explanation was given by their tour organizer, Lucia.  (Lucia is great, very knowledgeable and engaging -- and she also has a three-year old!)

Cooking class may have been a bit of a misnomer, because the mother did all of the things that required skill, like mixing the pasta and the bread dough (and getting it in and out of the fiery brick oven!)  We got to roll out the pasta noodles (which is somewhat trickier than it looks), roll out the dough for the foccacia loaves, and put the ladyfinger cookies in the tiramisu.  But it was quite amazing to watch her work, and fun to participate in those little ways!

The menu was pici pasta, a traditional Tuscan pasta (a bit like egg noodles, although apparently the old-time recipe did not include eggs, since they were hard to get until somewhat recently).  There was a tomato sauce, and focaccia bread, some with cheese and some with rosemary.  They also served cheese and cold meat (prosciutto and cappicola, delicious!), and of course the dessert.  There was also wine that was also made in their family (which we termed "breakfast wine", since the class started at 10 AM).  It was a delicious meal!!  They sent us home with little jars of sauce and recipes.  :)  Somehow I doubt we would be able to replicate that at home. 

Afterwards, we returned to the villa for a siesta, and then went to the town of Chiusi in the evening to pick up another friend at the train station (which was not so easy to find -- thank goodness my phone has a GPS.)  We had a pizza dinner which was also quite enjoyable, and did an evening walk by some old churches and a park with Etruscan ruins. Hilariously, the sign for the park said that these were the archeological ruins that weren't in great demand elsewhere, so they were used as decoration in the parks. :)  There's just so many archeological artifacts here they don't even know what to do with them!