italy

i think i can use this space best by writing some quick thoughts now and again. days are really full right now, everything feels new, and so quick thoughts will be the best way to let people know how i'm doing and what has been happening.

milan was saturday, a long plane flight, barely made my connection in rainy dublin, got to italy and it was sunny but my body felt like it was four in the morning. it's five days later and i feel like i only just now am catching up on sleep. that's because 16 cooks are living together, and it feels like some kind of mix between freshman year of college and mtv real world. but, i must admit, ten of us in the hotel in milan on saturday night was a good time.

sunday we arrived in colorno, a small town near parma. it's been beautiful here, blue skies and farm roads, little bridges crossing lazy rivers. we cook in a castle that's drenched in sunlight, old and tall on the outside, modern on the inside.

tuesday was our first real day in the kitchen. each week we will be focusing on recipes from a specific region of italy - this week we are cooking recipes from liguria. amazingly, to prepare for this lesson, our chef-instructor had driven to his mother's house in liguria and picked from her garden an array of wild herbs that would be used in a filling for triangular shaped ravioli called pansoti. to use fresh and local ingredients like this from his mother's garden was amazing. and more amazing was watching our chef demonstrate the dish - he made the pasta dough and rolled it into thin sheets with such ease, grace, and poise, and his final dish was honestly one of the most subtle and delicious things i've ever eaten. i got a little down on myself when i couldn't exactly duplicate what he'd just done. but i know i'm here to learn, and even when i don't make a dish as perfectly as i would have liked to, this learning process is what's important.

it was hard to be in a new kitchen with a new teacher, not knowing where to find things, not yet knowing the rhythms of the day. i was also thrown off by the fact that the two pasta dishes we did that day were both made with an uncooked sauce. rather than boiling the fresh pasta and transferring it to a saute pan with sauce, we took the pasta out of the water, put it in a bowl with a little olive oil, plated it, and drizzled our uncooked sauce on top. i feel comfortable finishing my pasta in a saute pan with sauce. plating unsauced pasta and drizzling an uncooked sauce on top was new for me. but, adjusting to new kitchens and new chefs is all part of the deal, and it's something i should get good at.

ohh, and i almost forgot, on monday night we had dinner in parma, and i was eating prosciutto di parma in parma! and we were served plates of parmigiana cheese to go along with it. so nice.