The Tastes of Tuscany

So I think it's about time I told you a little about the scrumptious food over here in lil' Italy.
Let me just start off by saying, I have not yet eaten anything I didn't like. Everything here is delicious!!

Let's start with drinks:

Cioccolata Calda

The first day Francesca and I arrive in Florence, we walked around the city, and after getting cold from the rain, stopped in a cafe by Ponte Vecchio for a pick me up. We got cioccolata calda, which is hot chocolate. But let me tell you, Italian hot chocolate is nothing like American hot chocolate. American hot chocolate is not even close to being in the same league!! This hot chocolate is rich and thick and creamy and warms your whole body. None of that watered down American nonsense. This drink is definitely going to be one that I will miss when I leave Italy.

A couple weeks later, when I went to Venice and met up with my two friends Rachel and Julia from back home, we stopped in a cafe and got cioccolata calda. I wouldn't let them leave Italy without trying it first. They also thought it was amazing- if they didn't I would've slapped them!

Cappuccino 

You haven't had an Italian coffee until you've had a cappuccino. I mean, what else is there! Now the rule for cappuccinos: you drink it in the morning, but NEVER any later in the day. Want a coffee after lunch? Drink an espresso. People will look at you like you're crazy if you order a cappuccino in the afternoon or at night. It's just one of those social faux paus. 

Espresso

Now I don't have any pictures of any of the espressos that I've had to drink, but you know what it looks like. You get about a shot of it and can add sugar if you want. This is very common to drink here.  Yeah yeah I know- you know that, it's Italy. c'mon daiva. Whatever. It is. This you can drink at lunch time or breakfast or at night! Pretty much all the time. When I was staying with Anna in Milan, we had a shot of espresso in the morning, and we added a little milk to it. Then at lunch, we would just have a shot. When you go to a bar for an espresso, the most common way to drink it is standing up at the bar, pastry optional. It's my regular drink now in the mornings, sometimes with milk, sometimes without. 

The way you make an espresso is the most interesting, and at first scary, part. You take this machine that has three parts: a bottom, a filter, and the top. 1. Pour cold water into the bottom part unit lit reaches the little vent on the side. 2. Put the filter in the bottom part. This filter looks like a funnel, so the funnel part goes into the water. 3. Add coffee grounds until you have a mound above the edge. 4. Screw the top on. The top part will hold the finished espresso. 5. Put on the stove and wait. 

How it works is when the water boils, it pushes up through the coffee grounds, then up into the top container. It's kinda antigravity cool. 

Wine

What's Italy without wine? Italians drink wine all the time! For lunch, apperitivo, dinner, late at night… it's definitely a big part of the lifestyle. And here in Florence is there perfect place to drink it because most of the wine is produced in the Tuscany region, like the famous (and delicious) Chianti. Ooolala!                                                                                                                This picture of wine, however, is from Rome. My friend took me out to a restaurant and the dessert wine was called "sexy wine", and baby, sexy it was. It tasted like strawberries and smelled delicious!!

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Ok, now on to food!!

Pasta

I mean what's the first thought you have when you think of Italy? Pasta. Now the secret to why Italians can eat so much pasta without gaining a whole bunch weight is in the way it's cooked: you need a big pot of water, and once it boils, put an italian pinch of salt in, then the pasta. Now you don't want to cook the pasta until it's soft like we do in america. This pasta is cooked al dente, so it still has some texture and strength to it. Why this is better is when you cook the pasta in a big pot, the water extracts all the starch from the noodles. If you keep the noodles in there longer than al dente, they reabsorb the starch. Thus, fatty noodles. Interesting huh?

I'll keep these short:

- In Rome, at a small cafe for a late lunch, I had spaghetti alla bolognese, which is a meat sauce. Oh baby it's good. 

-Same meal, one of my roommates had the traditional spaghetti alla carbonara, which is an egg sauce with panchetta, and italian bacon type thing. 

- This is penne with a zucchini cream sauce- it was very interesting to see, and it was so good!

- This was a pasta we had when we went to Padua for the weekend. We stopped at a small farm outside the city where everything they grow is organic, and everything they serve for meals is grown on the farm. This pasta was another ragu sauce, which is the same meat sauce. So good!

- The same weekend we went to Padua, we spend the day in Venice, and what else do you eat in a city in the Mediterranean? Sea food of course! We stopped at a restaurant and has the most delicious sea food! I had spaghetti with clams, mussels, and prawns. 

Pizza

Now, the second thing you think of when you think of Italy… go! If it wasn't pizza, you've got problems. Mamma mia this pizza is delicious!! The thing I think I like the best about it, is it's all so simple. There are only one or two toppings on it including cheese. I had this one pizza one night called a diavolina that did not have sauce, and just had parmesan cheese and spicy sausage. It was probably one of the best pizzas I've ever had!! 

The pizza here is pretty thin. I wouldn't say it's as thin a new york style pizza, but it's not as thick as regular, blackjack pizza. It's thin and light, and flaky almost. In other words, it's delicious!!

Here are some picaruskies:

Going through my pictures, I've noticed that I do not have a lot of pictures of pizza… so I will try in the future. But it's probably better that I'm eating it instead of taking pictures, right?

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Now the cooking class that I am taking is called "Trends in Italian Cuisine", so I thought when signing up for it I would be taking a class in which I learned about the food of Italy, but also how it's changing and how to adapt it. But instead, the first day, our teacher said that this was not a beginner's cooking class, and we would be learning how to decorate the food using the ingredients we use within the dish. What?! So exciting! So that's what we've been doing, and it has been an absolutely amazing experience! Mama, Tete, thank you so much for letting me take this class!

Week 1:

The way the class is set up, is the first hour is lecture about some part of the history of Italian food and/or the preparation and where it comes from. It's very interesting. I have learned so many fascinating things about italian food that I never would have even thought to be true! Like, did you know that Caterina de'Medici was actually the one who invented crepes? Yup. She was a great cook and when she married the prince of France, she took all her recipes with her, and they became popular over there. Whudda thunk?

Then the next hour and a half is spent cooking! After we cook all the food, our teacher decorates one or two plates for each dish we make. And she is spectacular!

Anyway, so week one was probably one of my favorites. We first made panna cotta with a strawberry sauce and a blackberry sauce. Decorations courtesy of Milva.

ooolala!

Then the next thing we made (well we actually make everything at the same time, then decorate it all towards the end), was this delicious creation of heaven. We took  turkey, pounded it out til it was thin, then put cheese and artichokes (that we already cooked up) inside, rolled it up, and wrapped prosciutto around it. Then, after cooking some spinach, we put that in the bottom of a baking dish, then put the turkey rolls on top, poured a little cream over the tops of all of them, and baked them for 15 minutes. Goodness- I cannot describe to you just how absolutely delicious this was!!

Week 2:

Oh boy baby this week, we made a Chocolate Soufflé with a melted inside….

…. and a pumpkin risotto and spinach risotto….

These risottos….probably one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten!!! And it's so simple to make too! They always serve it in such fancy restaurants, but it's really not that hard to make. It takes a while, but I think I have made it… 4 times in my apartment since making it in class. So simple! And so rich and creamy and warm and smooth and delicious….

Week 3:

This week was pasta week. We learned about the differences between dry and fresh pasta, and used both in our dishes. One dish was a pasta with a sauce made of sun dried tomatoes, spinach, pepper, and goat cheese:

mmmm-mmmm it was delicious!

Then we made some spinach pasta, which we then added to a soup. Oh it was so good!

Week 4:

This week was all about the Italian apperitivo. This is usually taken around 7:30 in the evening and consists of little appetizer-size foods with drinks. So we made three things. The first was a leek stuffed foccaccia:

The next was a soft cracker-cookie like thing with a slice of sautéed apple and mortadella, an Italian sausage:

and third was a chicken and leek mixture wrapped inside of puff pastry. It had a little asian flair to it:

mmm delectable!

I haven't uploaded my pictures yet from this past week, but we made ravioli and a cream dessert! You have no idea how happy I am to be in this class!!

Well there's a little taste (hee hee) of what the food is like here in Italy. Absolutely magnificent. That is all I can really say about it.  You just really need to come try it….