Bluone Cooking Tours, Bologna Italy

Jason and I thought it'd be neat to take a cooking class in Italy. And after some research decided to do the "One Day Bologna Food Market Visit and Hands-On Cooking Class at Local Italian Family Home" with Bluone.

The class started off with a tour of the market. Raffaella, the mother, and Francesca, the daughter were our guides. They were both very thorough and extremely knowledgeable about the food and history of the region. During the tour of the market, we stopped in stores to purchase the ingredients we'd be using for the dinner we'd be cooking later in the day. It was cool that they let us choose what we wanted to make and we basically came up with the menu right there at the market.

After the market, you're left alone for an hour or so for lunch. Jason and I headed over to Ristorante Diana and had a great meal. I'll blog about that later.

Now onto the post-lunch festivities..

Raffaella made us some zucchini flowers to nibble on before dinner. And you see her below on the left whisking the batter that the zucchini flowers are going to be dredged in.



Francesca, pictured above on the right, is the pasta expert and we learned how to make two.. a tortelloni and a strozzapreti. In the pic, she's showing us how big the squares of pasta should be cut for the tortelloni.

And, voila! Tortelloni! The pretty ones are made by me. :)


The strozzapreti, "priest choker", pasta is local to the Emilia Romagna region. It's one of the easiest shapes to make. Just cut the pasta into strips a little wider than fettucine, hold one end between your two hands and move each hand in opposite directions to twist the pasta. Rip off the twisted piece and continue.


We also made two sauces.. One was a tomato and shallot sauce, the other was a pizzaiola sauce.


For our main entree, we made veal and a side of roasted leeks with prosciutto and parmesan.



After all the hard work was done, we went out to the dining room and found a plate of meats waiting for us at the table.



Everything came together well. Francesca and Raffaella took turns bringing in one dish after another and this is how our finished meal looked..


Tortelloni in Sage and Brown Butter Sauce


Strozzapreti in Tomato and Shallots Sauce


Veal with Pizzaiola Sauce


Pannacotta


I highly recommend this class to anyone. It's intimate and completely hands on. There's no more than 4 to a class and you get to eat the fruits of your labor with the entire family. 180 euros per person and worth every bit of it.