Tutto per favore

Mondays means sports night so after class yesterday we walked down to the sports area and played volleyball and soccer and basketball, or as Fabricio the coordinator says "lets play basket". I brought my camera but for got to take any pictures. I should because its a great court. The sportsnight is meant only for soccer and volleyball but the guy who manages the courts lets me get a key so me and a couple people can play. We have to use the light from the street and soccer courts, which is just barely enough but makes great ambiance. Playing in near dark with the arno glittering to the right ant tall trees above. Today I had two classes- Intro duction to professional cooking and wine appreciation. First was cooking at 9am. Today was all about sauces. We learned there are a few basic sauces that chefs will make that they can then turn into many others depending on what is needed. First we made Bechamel sauce (pronounced besh a mell) which is a thickener. To make a bechemel you take 50 g butter 50 g white flour, 1/2 liter milk, sale pepe and nutmeg. Melt the butter and let it simmer for a minute add the flour, whisking quickly and steadily then add all the milk in ( you can also heat the milk in a separate pan before) making sure you dont stop whisking. Bring to a boil (make sure you dont scorch) still stirring and add the nutmeg sale pepe ( a pinch of each) and stir until thickened. If you want a darker sauce cook longer. White sauce is the most common bechemel though. As we made the bechemel sauce we made a tomato sauce as well. We cooked olive oil and chopped garlic on high then added whole tomatoes that had been cubed along with sale pepe. We let that cook down and pureed it by hand. When that was done we mixed two parts tomato sauce to one part bechemel and it made a great creamy tomato sauce, almost like a soup, that you can put on pasta or ravioli. One thing the chef showed us is how if you pure the tomatoes with an electric blender the sauce turns orange. By hand and it remain a strong red color. Next we made sicilian pesto which is regular basil pesto mixed with tomato sauce. We made a couple more sicilian sauces including one with whole anchovies (the ones over here are fresh and not the salty type you get in the states) capers, olives and oregano. We also made tomato sauce with canned tomatoes and fresh tomatoes so we could experience the difference. The canned tomatoes didnt taste bad but had an acidic quality that the fresh tomatoes didnt. We added some zuccharo (sugar) to the canned sauce to counteract the acidity. Lastly we made homemade mayonaise. I was surprised by how much oil there is. I thought there was butter or some kind of dairy but the ingredients were oil, egg yold, sale pepe, vinegar and more oil. We cracked the eggs and separated the yolk into a mixing bowl. After we had wisked the yolks and vinegar my parner slowly poured the oil in while i whisked vigorously. The oil was poured in so slowly it took about 10 minutes to get it all in there. My arms were burning by the end but the oil and yolk had turned into a thick spread. You can make this with a mixer machine but he wanted us to experience making it by hand. Plus you all get to see me in my chefs uniform- dont mind the ears! Its the hats fault!
Wine appreciation was my next class. Today we talked about the last part of tasting wine: gustative, or actually tasting it. We had already gone over visual and olfactory. Carlotta went over the different parts of the tongue that pick up different tastes. There are three parts of tasting wine; the attack, or first taste, the secondary taste which lasts about 15 seconds and the finish which is the after taste. She went over acidity, tanninity, sweet or dry, evolution of the wine, boldness, intensity, persistence and flavor. As usual we had a red, a white and a sweet wine. All were very good today, especially the sweeter wine. It was like a spumante and was a nice white refreshing wine. She handed out tasting analysis papers and told us our homework was to analize a new wine. After class a couple of my roommates and I went to the postoffice to turn in our permesso, or permission to stay paperwork. The waiting are was set up like the DMV at home, only the wait was alot shorter. On the way back I got another doner kabob, which today was extra massive. They are sogood. Its like the fast food of Europe (along with the panino and pizza shops) except 1000 times better than taco bell and the rest. Here instead of diet coke its coke light and tastes alot better than diet coke. Kabob and drink, only 5euro. When you order the kabob comes as either a roll (panino) or in a thick flour tortilla (piadina) if you order piadina the place next to my house will make the dough fresh and cook the tortilla. Then they fill it with your choice of lettuce, two kinds of a kind of coleslaw veggie mix, pomodoro (tomato) onion, a huge pile of chopped lamb and patate fritte (fried potatoes) topped with chili and some kind of white sauce similar to dressing. I just say tutto, or everything and its perfect. When I got home I had to take a nap for a few hours to deal with the kabob. When I woke up my roommates had dinner ready, tonight it was tortellini with the tomato and bechemel sauce and a nice salad. I found a calling card in my wallet and I had some time to call my mom, which was good. My mom and I are very close and it was good to hear her voice. My poppa is coming to visit in January and mom shortly after so Itll be good to be able to show my parents everything. Theyre both very different but have great appreciation for the things that stand out here. Tomorrow I have Italian regional cooking, basketball and Italian language class. My first field trip is this weekend, to Rome. Im also trying to make it to Octoberfest, which should be fun. Ciao