Day 13: Rome - Italian Cooking Class

I think today can only be described as the best day of my trip so far. I know that's a pretty big call, but you have to believe me when I say it was that good.  I've posted a lot of pictures in this post, so be warned...

First of all, after two very ordinary days I woke up feeling human again. Yeah!!! It really was a relief to feel so much better as I was scheduled to do a 4 course cooking class starting at 10am, and I really didn't want to miss out.

I made my way via a cab to the La Fete Restaurant in Trastevere, where chef Andrea Consoli runs his "Cooking Classes In Rome" in the kitchen of his actual restaurant. Today there were 12 of us taking the class, 3 of us from Australia and the rest from the US.

One of the basic philosophies of Chef Andrea is to use products sources locally (where ever possible) from with the Lazio region. In the very small restaurant kitchen, we all helped Chef Andrea prepare a full 4 course meal which we then sat down and ate together.

The produce we'd be using...

Now for the pasta story in pictures...

Making pasta...

Getting ready to roll through the pasta machine...

The end product...

Cooking the pasta...

After adding the mushroom sauce...

Serving the pasta...

Eating the pasta...  (The end)

When it came time to eat, you could also pay an additional 20 euro to do a wine matching with each course, but given my health the last few days, I decided not to risk it, but from all accounts, the wines were great as well.

And we all helped out in one way or another to assist in the preparation of our meal which consisted of:

Appetizer – Deep fried Neapolitan style pizzette (yes the dough was deep-fried)

Pasta – fresh made Fettuccine with Porcini Mushrooms (it also included Champinions and Pletus)

Main – Scaloppine di pollo con prosciutto e salvia (Chicken scaloppini with prosciutto, cheese and sage)

Dessert – traditional Tiramisù (this was literally to die for - delicious)

 

 

This class was sooooo good and was a real bargain at only 50 euro - Andrea has a real passion for cooking and teaching and I can't recommend him and this class highly enough.  If you are coming to Rome, this is an absolute MUST DO on your itinerary!  I'll be doing another class next time I come to Rome (now there's some optimism for you).

It really was a great way to spend 6 hours. After eating our delicious meal, we we finished up around 4pm. Chef Andrea has already emailed us the recipes so we can try to make it ourselves at home.

I headed back to the hotel to freshen up for my night time adventure of touring the Colosseum at night, and what a night it turned out to be.

As I've previously mentioned, for a few months, there's been a very special night time opening of the Colosseum on Saturday nights, that were thankfully extended into October just prior to my departure from Australia.  I took the metro to the Colosso stop where I was able to take in all her mightly grandur at night.  I basically walked around the entire structure before finding the special entrance we had to use.  Once our reservation number was confirmed we could go in an purchase our tickets, and then it was back outside waiting for our departure time.

 

 

I was on the first English speaking tour of the night that started at 9:20pm.  There were about 20 of us on the tour (I think the Italian tours had up to about 40 people) with our guide.  Even though I've toured inside the Colosseum before, nothing was quite as amazing as the atmosphere this night time visit brought.  Apart from the fact there weren't the usual thousands upon thousands of tourists jostling past, we pretty much had the place to ourselves and got to go to some sections that are normally off limits to the normal day time visitors.

 

With the moon out and some light cloud in the sky, it was the perfect setting.  I think our visit lasted around 45mins to an hour.  Afterwards, it was back on the metro to the hotel.