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COOKING COURSES

What about eating well and learning how to cook typical Italian recipes during your holiday in Italy?
Join our cooking classes - or rather, we’ll join you directly at your villa - and enjoy one of the most fun and interesting experiences of your holiday! In English, of course.
You can choose between cooking classes of typical recipes from Tuscany and Umbria or worldwide famous delicious Italian dishes.
Whatever your choice, our cooking classes will start with a nice aperitivo and a glass of fine Italian wine. You will receive your apron and chef hat along with a notebook (your notebook, you don’t need to return it) with all the recipes that we will prepare together. You will learn the secrets of the real Italian cuisine and you will spend your time learning and having fun.
At the end of the Italian cooking class, we will treat you to a hand-made and hand-painted pottery item as your personal souvenir of our Italian cooking class.
Once the recipes are ready, you will sit all together and taste our delicious dishes matched with Chianti and other great local and Italian wine.
We offer a series of courses which cover a wide range of cooking settings and specialties: bakery, pizza, home-made pasta, typical recipes, small pastry, chocolate processing, carving of fruit and vegetable and decoration with chocolate and sugar. Each course, with practical experience, will be supervised by Filippo or another of our professional chefs.

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Here are some of the recipes you can choose for your Italian cooking class:

ARVOLTOLO WITH MARINATED CARPACCIO OF CHIANINA MEAT
(Recipe from Umbria and Tuscany)

RECIPE
Arvoltolo is a delicious Perugia recipe, similar to a small fried pizza. Of ancient origins, Arvoltolo was consumed not only on holiday time but also as a tasty everyday breakfast or afternoon snack. Nowadays it is cooked only in very traditional families and perhaps in restaurants which do not disregard recipes of past times.
Ingredients (for 4 people)
Flour: 250 grams
Seeds oil: 300ml (to fry)
Salt: 10 grams
Yeast: 8 grams
Sparkling Water: about 200ml
Preparation method
Add salt and yeast to the flour and mix with water to achieve a fluid dough. Pour oil into a non-stick frying pan of 20 centimeter diameter. Once the oil is hot, pour a little bit of dough to shape a layer just ticker than a leaf. Let cook the dough on both sides turning upside down. Once the cooking is finished, take the Arvoltolo out from the frying-pan, sprinkle salt and serve hot.
Note – The name Arvoltolo, derives from the need to turn the dough upside down (“arvoltare” as we say in Perugia dialect) in order to cook it on both sides in a small frying-pan.
Variation – If you prefer a small sweet pizza, you will sprinkle sugar on the Arvoltolo instead of salt.
It’s delicious!


TORTA AL TESTO
(Recipe from Umbria)
Torta al testo is a flat griddle bread, perhaps one of the most popular breads found across Umbria. Torta al testo is a very versatile bread which can be served with any kind of side dish, although it is often accompanied by plates of cured meats and cheese or served with stews or braised meat to sop up the delicious pan sauce. It is cooked on a hot testo (a round cast iron surface), hence its name. The recipe of Umbrian Torta al testo dates back to thousands of years ago.

Ingredients for no. 4 Torte al testo, (flat bread):
Flour “00”: 1 kg
Brewer’s Yeast: 25 g
Baking powder “pizzaiolo”: 1 sachet
Salt 25 g
Extra-Virgin Olive Oil 2 spoons
Lard 2 spoons
Water 150 ml
Milk 300 ml
Preparation method
Sift the flour onto a working surface (marble is ideal) to form a volcano-shaped mound with its mouth in the centre. Add salt, olive oil, lard, baking powder, and start kneading it with milk. At the same time dissolve the brewer’s yeast in warm water and mix all the ingredients.
Shape the dough into a ball, dust lightly with flour, wrap, and let it rest for 30 minutes.
Preheat the testo or the oven (in the past it was cooked under ashes). Cook each torta al testo until its color is golden-brown on both sides, about 2 minutes per side, turning once.

GNOCCHI DI PATATE
(Recipe from Umbria)
(Little potato dumplings)

In ancient times, gnocchi and other similar pasta were made boiling small, shapeless pieces of colored semolina dough and were then served with butter and Parmesan.
When potatoes became a common ingredient in the kitchen, people started to make gnocchi with flour and potatoes instead of the standard semolina dough. This is their distinguishing feature; that’s why gnocchi di patate are one of the first handmade pasta specialties.
Ingredients for 8 people:
Potatoes 1,5 kg
Flour “0” 750 g
Egg 1
Parmesan cheese 40 g
Method:
Boil the potatoes with their skin until they have a soft heart. Peel and squash them. Add flour eggs and parmesan. Take the dough and roll it out to create a long “cord”. Cut the cord in smaller pieces (gnocchi) with a spatula. Cook gnocchi in slightly salted boiling water for 3-4 minutes or until al dente ( until the gnocchi go up to the surface of water).
Drain and mix with the sauce. Serve with parmesan cheese.

DESSERT TIRAMISU…
(Italian Recipe)

Ingredients for 4 people;
16 Pavesini or Savoiardi biscuits
3 Eggs
Mascarpone Cheese 250gr
Sugar 3 tablespoons (one for each egg)
Coffee 2 Cups
Chocolate powder without sugar 2 tablespoons
Preparation method
Break the eggs and divide the yolks from the albumens. Mix sugar with the yolks and whip up till you obtain a white cream. Mix Mascarpone Cheese with whipped albumens. Mix the yolks and albumen and lay the resulting cream on a tray. Soak the biscuits into coffee (just for one second) and then place the biscuits above the cream to create one layer. Put another layer of cream and another layer of soaked biscuits. Three layers will be enough.
Sprinkle with chocolate powder and put in the freezer for two hours.
( You can also put chocolate chips on tiramisu!)