Since she doesn't like cooking and there were SO many other places we could see on a similar budget we whittled and whittled and whittled it down to one 3 hour cooking class and an overnight...but we couldn't bring ourselves to cut it out completely and I'm so glad.
Claudio was charming and we had a private lesson with him today and got to cook in his restaurant kitchen our own dinner and the dinner for his cooking class' Gala, or final, evening.
I think he really enjoyed the lesson, and having a private class with 2 people as he is used to teaching in his "lesson kitchen" for the groups of 9 or 10 that stay for the classes. He said that a lot of the recipes that we did he couldn't do with a big group "is no possible, no."
He also has a restaurant on the property which you have to book 3 weeks ahead to get a reservation! And that is mostly local Italians that come to eat. He had several calls from patrons to his personal line asking for reservations for tomorrow - they had called the office and been told there was no room so then they call him directly..."is no possible, no." The second time I said "same guy?", he said "no, different guy, same problem".
He used to come to Toronto every year and teach the cooks at the Westin Harbour Castle and teaches Chefs throughout the winter when the tourist season is over.
We made a beautiful pancetta (bacon) carbonara with no cream in it. He kept just asking me (because he knew I love to cook)..."have you had a carbonara". "yes.". "we'll make carbonara, very nice"
"do you like eggplant?"
"Yes".
"We'll make an eggplant appetizer served over fresh picolino cheese with basil, very nice...do you like saffron?"
"Yes".
"Do you like zucchini flower?"
" Zucchini flour?"
" Zucchini flower?"
"Zucchini flour?"
"The flower of zucchini?"
"The actual flower?"
"Yes, the flower, the bloom"
"I don't know, sure!"
"We'll make cream soup with saffron and zucchini flower, very nice" It was unreal.
I also deboned a baby wild boar and we made a porcetta roast out of it, which was amazing. Claudio would say "first I do and then you do...alore", so he deboned the right half from ribs to loin and I did the left half. We seasoned it with fresh fennel and garlic, topped it with pancetta, so it wouldn't dry and after 45 minutes added a half bottle of dry white wine. Claudio said "any wine is good for drink is good for cook". He uses half drank bottles of wine from the restaurant to cook the next day.
I made focaccia bread with rosemary - I told Claudio that the focaccia at home is "thick and you could kill someone with it" - he really liked that - our focaccia was soft and delicious. Then we also homemade pasta with just egg and flour into ravioli stuffed with ricotta cheese, fresh from that morning from sheep milk.
Everything has a liberal amount of salt and of olive oil (pressed from his olive grove). He has a half acre garden, so all of the herbs were fresh as were the vegetables we used and the wild boar was bought straight from the hunter that morning.
We also made (and keep in mind then we ATE all of this for dinner in the restaurant) a white chocolate souffle for dessert.
One thing to note is that in Italy 90% of your meal is cooked to order, there are not a lot of pre prepared foods, it's all fresh and chopped and cooked when you order the meal. So from 4-7 is usually Claudio's down time before it gets busy at 8 and his helper comes in. So it didn't stress him out at all to be doing a cooking class (though we were helping prepare some of the restaurant dishes) just before the dinner rush. He had us, a table of 3, a table of 2, a table of 9 and a retirement party of 15 at the restaurant that night. I said "don't you have to get ready for dinner?". He said "ready? What ready? Everything cook fresh, is no ready". His helper comes in in the morning to make cookies, pastries and a few bases (mussel souffle was being served to one of the groups), leaves and comes back at 8pm.
Then back to the hotel, which I haven't even mentioned yet. We were to stay at an Agritourismo (farm holiday) in a little apartment that had laundry but was like most of our other accommodations, fairly basic. But we arrived at Villa La Palagina...a beautiful Tuscan villa resort. Upgrade!
Apparently the Podere San Giusto had to close for 15 days for renovation and Sabrina found us a room with a balcony at the Palagina. I think there was a MAJOR favour called in to get us a room. We thought that the Manager was kidding when he said "ah, light" when he helped us to our room with our baggage, but then again he said "ah, you're Canadian, this makes sense why you pack so light - usually Sabrina she bringing the Americans with 20 parcels". Our room is the only one with a balcony in the resort and it overlooked, once again, a lovely landscape and the two pools. Though it was quite far from anything else, so we didn't see any of the town of Figline Valdarno itself. We also decided to leave on the 9:18 train this morning to get to Cinque Terre at 1:40 this afternoon instead of arriving 2 hours later...since the only draw to Figline really was Claudio.
It's very "hazy" here, the air isn't crisp. I don't know if it's the time of year, or if it's always like this...everything looks very "soft" and picturesque.
I'll add photos once I have wifi, there was only wifi in the lobby at the hotel and I only had enough time this morning to send the video of the view from our balcony out.
Just uploaded photos and can't believe we didn't take any of dinner!
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