On our trip to Rome, after exploring the Vatican, all eleven of us took an Italian cooking class together at Trustevertastes - a play on words of the neighborhood's name: Trastevere. The class was about two blocks from our AirBnB on the Piazza Santa Maria and was a great experience.
We had two Italian chefs showing us the ropes - Paola and Lilly. Paola is a professional chef with a cookbook coming out soon. Lilly served as the sous chef. Lilly was snarky and hilarious. At one point she called David's rambunctious Uncle Rick a "difficult man," and after seeing David E's attempt at pasta making she suggested he should just buy pasta from the store. Lilly also said the pici Paul rolled were too thin. Well, her exact phrase in Italian was "come si dici anorexia?" Needless to say, we loved Lilly's playful attitude.
Over the course of a few hours, we prepared three separate pasta dishes form scratch:
1) Lentil soup with "badly cut noodles" (maltagliati)
2) Pici noodles (a fat hand-rolled spaghetti) with an amatriciana sauce
3) Tagliatelle with a sausage, beef and veal ragu
Our favorite was the pici all'amatriciana. It's a very simple pasta (just semolina flour and water) in a delicious tomato and pork sauce. For dessert, the chefs prepared a peach gelato for us to enjoy and of course there was antipasti and plenty of wine. If you thought Italian food was heavy in general, try eating three courses of pasta with wine! We lost David E. midway through the meal (after the 2nd pasta course) because he got too sleepy. Betsy and Chad were troopers - they arrived earlier that morning but made it through the whole meal like champs.
David is ready to go!
Betsy and Chad with our first batch of pasta dough.
Paola helping Rick start the sauce.
Learning from the chefs.
Pici noodles.
Rolling out the pici by hand.
Lilly helped us with the egg noodles.
David and his Mom.
Here's a man that knows his way around a ragu!
Paul's heating up the oil for the ragu.
David's parents rolling pici.
Paul and David's Dad rolling out the tagliatelle.
Christina and David's mom getting ready to eat some pasta!
Paul and him mom making the tagliatelle.
Ragu Time with David E. & Paul.
Uncle Rick and David's Dad take this very seriously!
Sunset view from the cooking class window.
The finished product - a delicious lentil and pasta soup.
Pici all'amatriciana. Delicous!
The tagliatelle with ragu.
And dessert!
What a great evening in Rome! A cooking class is always a great way to learn more about the culture of the place you're visiting and we highly recommend this one in Rome if you have opportunity. Even David's family, who are Italian and have been making pasta for years, learned a few new tricks to improve their recipes.
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