Florence, Italy
In Florence, I am in a yummy class called, “Foods of Italy,” where we cook and learn about the regions of Italy that foods come from.
We have made risotto from Piemonte, pesto from Liguria, shin of veal from Lombardia, tiramisu from Veneto, lasagna with fresh pasta from Emilia Romagna, potatoes with rosemary and garlic from Tuscany, fresh fruit tart from Umbria, carbonara from Lazio and that’s just the start of it.
We have class once a week for two-and-a-half hours in which we first talk about the region we are covering that day and discuss three recipes we will be following that day.
Contributed Photo:
Junior Meagan Whalen is pictured here at a Florentine pizzeria named Spera.
Then we get dressed in our chef jackets, aprons and chef hats and get to work.
The class consists of 11 females and one male. Our teacher is an Italian chef from Calabria who owns his own restaurant where he makes the most amazing food!
It is such a good time and we definitely leave class stuffed full.
So far I have learned so many tricks this semester, such as adding salt to your pasta water to make it boil faster and make the pasta taste salted and delicious.
I have also learned how recipes that we have in the United States have changed from Italy. For example, when making lasagna in the United States, we use ricotta or cottage cheese, where the traditional Italian dish uses a Bechamel sauce. This simply has butter, flour and milk in it. I have also learned so many different uses for different parts of animals, mostly the cow.
We have used the leg with the shin bone in, but you can also use all parts.
The recipe depends on the region that the ingredients come from. For example, mountainous parts of Italy get goods and make recipes that last longer because they are unable to get fresh food from markets as often as people who live in the cities.
We have also learned such interesting things, like how Milan gets the freshest of fish even though they are not on the coast, but because they are the richest region.
Contributed Photo:
Whalen said, “It will be sad to leave Florence and all the amazing foods…”
I have learned so much about the geography of Italy and so many facts about the regions through this class and the delicious food we eat. I have expanded my tastes because of this class and we have gotten to try so many traditional Italian food.
We also go to have a field trip one night to a restaurant where it would cost about 75 euros (about 100 dollars) for just one person to eat, but we only paid 25 euros for a four or five course meal. We were served unique food with many bottles of wine and I tried so many different foods that I never would have imagined myself trying at home. My favorite was the Florentine steak, it was the most delicious meat I have ever had.
Cooking class has been great and I have loved every minute of it. It is definitely not a class that you dread going to or prefer to skip (like many of the classes at Keene State College). We have about five more weeks of classes, one of which is our cooking exam, where we have to choose our own recipes and make them as our test.
It will be sad to leave Florence and all the amazing foods that I have eaten throughout Italy. Eating my way through Italy is the best way to summarize my time here and the trips I take.
