Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine’s Day, a day late. I actually forgot yesterday that it was in fact Valentine’s Day because hardly anyone here celebrates it here. There are still heart shaped chocolates in nearly all the shops, but the Americanized holiday I have become accustomed to is nowhere in sight. My roommates and I decided to put on a little dinner for ourselves. We made a pasta dish we had made previously in one of the cuisine classes which was surprisingly easy to make even in our tiny little kitchen. Rather than attempt a complicated vegetable to go along with our pasta, we simply had some corn. The pasta turned out delicious, if not a bit spicy. And then for dessert we had our options: three different types of a tart like cake/pie which is very popular in this region (plum, chocolate, and apricot) and then a carnival cake (which can only be found in Italy up until Carnival—thankfully my cuisine teacher has included these in her menu we will be making in the following weeks because they are delicious!!!). I am not ashamed to admit that I finished my plate of desserts, the crumbs too.

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Today in cuisine we made pasta!!! We actually made pasta pasta, as in the noodle part. We made the dough and then rolled it out with the handy help of a roller and then shaped the dough around several different fillings. The first raviolis we made were filled with pumpkin, and oh man oh man were they good. We topped them with a delicious walnut sauce which was simply chopped walnuts sautéed in butter and water—yummy!

Next we had spinach and ricotta filling inside of plain raviolis and then a ricotta filling inside of a spinach noodle. Both of these types of raviolis were topped with a basic tomato sauce.

Before we sat down to taste the raviolis we passed around a tray with a few different types of salami and baked bread. One of the salamis was actually a spread, which freaked me out a bit. And then one of the other meats was wild boar. Yep, I ate wild boar. It was a bit spicy, but pretty good.

We also tried a very sweet wine paired with parmesano romano.  I didn’t care for this pairing too much, it wasn’t so much the cheese as the wine. The wine was just too powerful for me. Apparently it is one of the most popular wines in all of Italy and thus one of the pricier wines.

 (This was the really strong, expensive wine)

And then my favorite part of the meal: dessert!!! Although the pumpkin raviolis could have served as a dessert because they were so sweet, we actually made tiramisu to finish off the meal. We took lady fingers and dipped them in really strong coffee, laid them in the bottom of a pan, covered them with a layer of beaten egg yolks, sugar, and cream, and then repeated the process. You must refrigerate the pan for about 24 hours so we actually enjoyed the tiramisu which the Monday night cuisine class had made previously.  I only tried tiramisu for the first time last week and now that I know how easy it is to make, I know I will be making it—like everything else I’ve learned so far—quite often.

Walking to class was an effort as we all moved slowly weighted down by the five course meal we had just consumed. It was difficult to stay awake and pay attention during class and to make matters worse we were reviewing for tomorrow’s exam. Hopefully, if I can stop dreaming about pumpkin raviolis and coffee-covered tiramisu, I will be able to study tonight and all day tomorrow for the exam.