Giovedi

Buon Giorno! This has been a pretty slow week, especially after going to Rome. On Monday in traditions of Italian cooking we made eggplant parmigiana. It is a pretty simple recipe and came out very well. We sliced the eggplant in either thick or thin slices (to our preferences) and either peeled them or didn't, as we chose. I cut thick slices and peeled mine. After we finished prepping the eggplant we set them aside and made a ragu the usual way, with carrots, celery, onion, garlic and tomato. When that was ready we heated up some oil to fry the egg plant. We again had a choice of either just rolling the eggplant in flour or to roll it in egg yolk and then roll it in flower. I chose to use egg yolk and set about frying my eggplant. While the eggplant was frying i battered some carrot and basil leaves to fry and ate those. Very good. When the eggplant was done frying I layered ragu, eggplant, ragu, mozzarella, parmigiana and the same two more times, ending with cheese on top. I put it in the oven and when it came out it was the best eggplant I've ever met. After class I went home and hung out until it was time to go to sports night. On the long walk there me and my roommates Mario and Steele met some girls from Sweden and Croatia and talked to them for a while. They were from a different school and were going to sports night also. When we got there we played volleyball for a while then like usual everyone separated into groups for soccer. Since the first time I went I haven't played soccer. I go and get a key and a ball from the manager and go play basketball by streetlight. There aren't any lights on the court and there's just enough light coming from the soccer Fields and the street to play with. Not many people play basketball but I have a bball partner named Jesse. She goes to the same school as me and is from Atlanta. We're usually the only ones playing every week but its good to have someone to play with and it feels great to play.

Tuesday I had to be at class at 9 for introduction to professional cooking. We were making spaghetti carbonara, which is a dish that I enjoy very much. We started out by frying some bacon (Italian good bacon not weak american bacon) in olive olio. When the bacon changed color we added lots of sale pepe and turned on low heat. We then put lots of sale in a pot of water and started cooking the pasta. One thing about Italian cooking that surprised me is how much salt they use. They might not use and trans fat and hardly any animal fat but its always "more salt, more salt". But anyway while the pasta was cooking we added heavy cream to the bacon and turned the heat up, stirring continuously. When the pasta was done we mixed the cream and bacon mix and stirred. We then added 3 egg yolks, stirring quickly to make them mix before they cooked in the hot pasta. It was a rich dish but very tasty. My next class was wine appreciation where we turned in our papers from our home wine tasting and learned about how wine is made. After class Mario and I walked to the place we have sportsnight and he played futball while i played basketball. Trying to communicate with a language barrier is easier when playing a sport that when you're just trying to talk about things in general. At the sports park is where I took all the outside pictures. The pictures don't really pass on the ambiance of the court, which is great, especially at night. The sun was setting so I grabbed my camera and took a few shots. Mario came and played bball with me for a while then we went home. I went over to visit Brittany for a while and checked out the art shes been doing at school, which has gotten much better.

Wednesday I didn't have class until noon and it was Italian regional cooking. We made ribolita, which is a vegetable soup similar to minestrone with the main difference being black cabbage. We put in carrots, onions, celery, zucchini, tomato, cabbage, black cabbage, thyme, red and white beans, potato. We cooked the harder veggies first in olive olio and garlic and then added the softer veggies and water. After it had cooked for a while we added break that we had sliced and baked with olive oil. On a side pan we put a large amount of olive olio and rosemary (the rosemary is still on the branch) and sage and cooked it together with sale pepe. When it had cooked together for a while we separated the oil from the herbs and added just the oil to the soup. It was a great soup! Very healthy and filling. After class I walked around for a while with Brittany and did my Italian homework at Santa Croce. Then I had Italian and we got back our quizzes i did well, I got a 90. After class me and some people from my Italian class went to movie night at Apicius. We watched the Roberto Benini movie, Life is Beautiful. Great movie. Id seen it before but it was a long time ago so i had forgotten some. Movie night was nice, they had some food and drinks set out - homemade truffles and little sandwiches. Hot popcorn was also passed around. Today has been nice so far, I slept in and I was going to make some omelette's but I figured that I should do my blog first. Any questions about recipes or anything else email me at sean_1_1@hotmail.com.

Ciao.