Rome Day 2 - Cooking School - Pasta,Pizza and Tiramisu

It is Sunday today and we are going to cooking school.  We took the metro to the end of the  Blue line.  We, and 8 other people are picked up and driven off into the country.  To my surprise, the classroom is outside - and it ended up - in the rain.

Chef Giuseppe first demonstrates how to make a pizza. That oven is so hot it only takes about 2 minutes to cook a pizza.

Then it is our turn.  The ladies go first (+ 1 gentleman) - while the men eat the pizza shown above.  First step - roll up your sleeves.

 Next use the top two joints of your fingers to gently mold the pizza

 After you have widened the pizza enough to use your palm - keep stretching the pizza until it is pan sized.

 He used a but-ton of flour as you can see above - then you have to "clean" the pizza by turning it from side to side until you have most of the flour off of it.  Then we would clean the table of the flour for the next step.  This may have been my downfall - as it is hard to hold the pizza so the center does not stretch too much.

 Then you put on the cooked tomatoes - not a sauce, just cooked tomatoes - and all the rest of the stuff.

 Next into the oven - give it a good shake to get if off the paddle.  He then uses another tool to constantly turn it so it cooks evenly.  After only two minutes it is ready.  But - mine got stuck on the surface of the oven and made a mess, creating a donut pizza.  It was still good!

Now it is Mike's turn.  Aah - perfectly shaped pizza!

We all ate our pizza's and had some of Chef Giuseppe's home made wine.  Then on to making pasta.  Half of the class made pizza dough and the rest of us pasta dough.  As the dough takes 24 hours to rise, each class uses the dough made by the class before.  There was two kinds of pasta dough.  Some made only with flour and water - this could be dried and kept for later use and that made with four and egg.  This could only be used while fresh.  Most of this section of the class was on how to make the many different shapes that the Italians love.  We must have made about 10-15 different shapes - I can't remember any of the names.  These sat around quite a while and got dried - so those were all thrown out.  Then we quickly all made the same shape which was later cooked.  First getting the pasta dough thin enough.  Chef Giuseppe used his machine "Cindy".  Now Mike lusts for one.

 The shape we made is on the left next to the paddle with the groves in it.

 Next we made spaghetti using this guitar box gadget.  The strings across the top are just like metal guitar stings.  You place the flattened pasta dough on top - then using a rolling pin - roll away from you pressing hard.  Then pull the rolling pin towards yourself causing the pasta to fall into the box.  It didn't always work so well - mine came out perfectly.  I joked that I had to make up for the donut pizza!!

 We did not make the tiramisu, the chef did - and it was the best I have ever tasted!