Cooking with Marinora

Yet another fun thing we did in Tuscany was take a cooking lesson with a wonderful woman named Marinora.  She came to the kitchen at Lupinari and we had the lesson there.  It was kind of cool to get to go into the kitchen where all our amazing food was being prepared.  

Here are the little cooks all ready to get started.

Chris set to work on chopping the onions for our "ragu" or meat sauce.

This was the first time he had ever chopped onions so he was a bit surprised when he started "crying".

He wiped his eyes and kept right on going....

until Ben wanted a turn. :)

This picture makes me laugh ~ when Chris was working at the stove browning the meat, he accidentally flipped some of the meat onto the back burner.  Ordinarily this would not have been a problem, but that empty burner had been mistakenly turned on high, so the meat immediately started burning and smoking.  Being that we were not familiar with the kitchen, none of us knew how to turn the exhaust fan on, so by the time someone from Lupinari came to do it, it was pretty smoky in there.  Once we got the burner cleaned up and the smoke cleared, I loved that Chris immediately asked to stir again ~ way to finish strong!

Ben taking his turn at the stove

We made homemade tagliatelle, which was easier than I thought and SO delicious.

The boys were dancing as they were making their pasta, keeping us all smiling.

Chris working on dessert, which was a strawberry tiramisu ~ seriously one of the best desserts I have ever tasted!  Marinora gave us copies of the recipes so we will be able to make this at home.

Project Pasta continues....

and continues....

Now all that remains is to cook it.  We were getting SO hungry!

The completed strawberry tiramisu ~ that kind of looks like cheese on top but it is chopped white chocolate.

Traditional Italian dinners start with an appetizer (antipasti), a first course (primi piatti), which is often a pasta dish, a second course (secondi piatti), which is usually some kind of dish with meat, and then dessert.  Meals are usually a long, relaxing "event".  We were eating what we made for lunch so we did not have antipasti, but above is our "primi piatti" ~ Homemade Tagliatelle with Ragu.  It was truly some of the best pasta I have ever had.  I did not take a picture of our secondi piatti ~ it was strips of beef with rocket lettuce and parmesan cheese ~ it was great too, and definitely something we will try to make at home as well.  Not only was this one of the best lunches I have ever had, it was also one of the BIGGEST!!

Ben and Chris with the lovely Marinora, who was a wonderful teacher and person.  We learned SO much, thank you!  Our cooking lesson with you remains one of our favorite parts of our trip.

The dessert was really delicious ~ not sure how we had room for it, but as the boys like to say, we found our "other compartment" in the stomach reserved for dessert.

Thankfully, we had some help with the dessert from Marinora, Antonella and her husband, otherwise we might have attempted to finish it off, so as not to waste any. :)

Well, that is it for Tuscany ~ definitely one of our favorite places, if not THE favorite, in Italy.

Ciao!