9/10/12

Organic cooking class  at Tavarnellie

We left here at 9 to be there by 10.30 a.m, peeing  down rain,great day to do this class. Arrived,on time to be meet by Silvio, Saraenella and  of course the main chef Manuela.

Introduction over we begin,our first thing to do was for each to prepare their pasta, we given enough flour, eggs and olive oil to mix together which in turn creates the pasta base, it is just like making mud pies, this now has to sit for a few hrs,the day being cooler it take the pasta longer to dry.

Next straight into the short crust pastry for the a Nanna's pie, 250 grams butter ,5 eggs , raw sugar that they ground down on a coffee grinder to look the same as casta sugar,we then had to rub the butter and the rest of the mix together to look like bread crumbs, we then worked it for a short while,then put it a side to rest.

The tomatoes  sauce was nearly the same as mum used to make when she made tomatoes and onion when I was a boy, the only difference was that this was all fresh organic food. While some of us where doing this others were making vanilla custard with fresh vanilla bean, it came out a treat we were all so proud of ourselves

Our next tasks was to make chicken liver and heart patte, fresh veggies stock, onions, sage,bay leaf, pork sausage,with the skin off, as well as  the above, reduce this down, then  chop this with what we called "the moon blade" until it was very fine, you can  purée if you wanted.

We also made two other types of sauces,a sala  verda, and a pesto. I found out the best way to make this is to add the oil last.

The main course was a meat loaf ,18 month old in age beef freshly chopped parsley and garlic , ricotta cheese ,parmism cheese,  mashpotatoes , small amount of flour, eggs and bread crumbs,put them together and what do you get , bippity boppity Bo , one  hell of a meat loaf, the flavour , the crunch , the textures, when we make it,you will see for your self.

Getting back to the villa became an adventure in its self, Silvio the host had told us a little village to pass by on our way back to the villa, typed in the name 3 came up ,picked the one we thought it was ,ended up back in Florence. We decided to stop and type in Certaldo where the villa is located and off we go again, stress levels  were  high and finding our way back didn't work out easily either, what should have been a 15 minute drive from the cooking class took 90 minutes. This was the final straw for Shirley ,she will not travel to Pisa tomorrow because I make her to stress, so she going to another place with Balty called Volterra, I'm disappointed but that's life, she probably needs the break from me cause driving here is not easy and I feel lost most of the time thus I get a bit on edge.

Shirley and I absolutely loved today and we are sure all that attended did also. The people who run this at Organic Tuscany were fantastic, look them up on trip adviser.