CET Student Correspondent News: Corso di Cucina

Ciao! Last night, a group of us went to In Tavola for a three-course cooking class! It was informative and very fun. I worked at the table with three of the Italian roommates: Denny, Caterina and Elisa, so I also improved my Italian.

The best part was eating everything afterward, of course. Here is a list of what we made:

Millefoglie di Verdure (Vegetable Millefoglie): We cut eggplant into slices and layered the eggplant with cheese, salt, pepper, oregano and a potato/zucchini mixture. After a quick bake in the oven, they were an easy to make and delicious appetizer.

Millefoglie di verdure

Potato Gnocchi: This was so fun. We peeled potatoes that had previously been baked and then mashed them. To the potatoes we added one egg yolk (or 1 “yellow” as the chef referred to it as), a flour mixture, cornstarch, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Then, we kneaded the dough and rolled it into a “sausage” where we cut the roll of dough into smaller pieces. Those pieces then had to be rolled into smaller “sausages”, cut into 1 inch pieces and shaped into balls. Gnocchi is also easy to boil because, as our chef says, when they are ready to be removed from the water they come to the surface and yell, “save me!

We also made two different sauces for the gnocchi: Ragu alla Bolognese (a typical tomato with meat sauce), shown above, and Sugo all’Aglione (tomato and garlic sauce).

Gnocchi alla bolognese

For dessert, we made Dolce al Cioccolato which literally means chocolate dessert. This had a soft center and was my favorite part of the meal, per usual.

In Tavola also offers a gelato making class, so maybe I will be back there soon!

A dopo (see you later)!


Hannah Rogers
CET Student Correspondent
History of Art and Italian Studies, Florence, Spring 2011