Down to the Wire

In exactly four weeks from today, I will be home. My four month stay abroad will officially be over, and it'll probably feel like it never happened. It always amazes me how fast the time goes. It's not like I'm counting down the days or anything, I'm definitely going to miss living here. I'm just excited for summer to start. And I'm so ready for classes and homework to be done with.

(ingredients at Chef Andrea's cooking class)

Between doing immense amounts of homework and sleeping, I fit in some time this week to attend one of the cooking classes (the same one I took earlier in the semester). There were only five students this time, so compared with the 20 that there were before, it was like a personal lesson! The menu du jour was:

For appetizers, we had stuffed Fiori di Zucca, which is actually a pumpkin flower. You know when you go to the pumpkin patch and see those pretty yellow and green flowers? Well, turns out that you can eat those - and I highly suggest that you do. All you have to do is pull out the pollen stem from the inside and then you're good to go. We stuffed half with prosciutto and mozzarella, and the others with thinly-sliced eggplant and mozzarella. Then we dunked them in a beer batter and threw them in the deep fryer (tangent: I need a deep fryer. I know it would become so dangerous so fast, but there are so many things that would just be better deep fried. Like grilled cheese. And pancakes. And a banana.)We made a sicilian pesto (includes tomatoes and almonds) for dipping and I could have eaten them all. They were probably the best thing on the menu (and that's saying a lot, the menu was great).

(pre-fry, yum)

(post-fry, even more yum)

For the pasta course, we had a zucchini carbonara (zucchini in place of the pancetta). At home, carbonara is like a cream sauce. Here, it's literally eggs whisked with parmesan cheese, poured over hot pasta. That's it. It was delicious, don't get me wrong, but something felt strange about using raw egg as a sauce.

(just whisking up the egg sauce, don't mind the handprints)

For the secondo, or meat course, we had a delicious veal dish. You bread the thinly-sliced cutlets in flour and quickly brown them in a pan with olive oil. Then you sautee up a bunch of mushrooms and peas with white wine. Once that's ready, you mix the little cutlets in with the veggies and let those finish cooking. And voila, italian scaloppine. Now, for dessert. I've never made a "souffle" before, and I don't think this was like a traditional souffle, but Chef Andrea called that so I will too. We added chocolate and pears to the mixture and it was warm and light and just the perfect ending.

(how cute is he, writing our names on our dish)

I really think that if being a food writer/sporadic blogger doesn't work out, I might go to culinary school. Or law school. I'll decide eventually.