Our Blog - Tuscany 2024 Trip - Cooking Class in Siena, Italy

During our trip, we decided to try a couple cooking classes where it made sense. It had to be in a place that we were staying at least 2 nights, so that we could leave Lucy in the hotel during the class ... plus ... there had to be a class we wanted to take. Our first cooking class was in Siena, and was supposed to be a 2-hour class with 3 pastas and 3 sauces, ending with a dinner of what we made. It actually ended up being a bit more than that, and a bit longer! But it was a great class and we learned quite a bit.

We started out with aprons and chefs hats! First up was gnocchi, little mashed-potato dumplings. The chef mentioned that they use red-skinned potatoes because of the starch content (although I couldn't understand if they have more starch or less starch than the other types of potatoes). We mixed up the potatoes (already prepared and cooled) with an egg and some flour. Then into 3rds, rolled into little logs, and cut to size. These then all went together to be cooked later.

Then came ravioli stuffed with spinach and ricotta.

We would have to wait to make the 3rd pasta and went to start the sauces. There were quite a number of different sauces being done at the same time and so they were split among the students. We started our meat ragu with onion, celery, and carrots with olive oil, then added ground meat and cooked until browned. The chef then added red wine, tomato paste, and some canned cherry tomatoes and then we cooked, and cooked, and cooked (the recipe says 90 minutes!)

There was also a vegetable sauce with potatoes and pumpkin, cooked in a vegetable broth and then blended until smooth.

Two vegetarian tomato-based sauces, one made with fresh tomatoes and the other with canned.

Our last pasta is called pici, which is a fat spaghetti made of just flour and water. After mixing, we separated it into pieces and hand-rolled them (sorry for the blurry picture).

We also ended doing a couple things that were not listed as part of our class. We did a little meat roll with thin steak filled with slices of salami and Scamorza cheese, and then a traditional Cantuccini (biscotti under a different name).

I apologize for not having pictures of the finished results ... everything got cooked (or finished for the sauces) by the staff and we all paid and headed next door to eat. The various dishes had been put together and served with (of course) pitchers of red wine.