cooking with passion
For those home cooks who want to learn about the genuine, everyday dishes produced in Umbrian kitchens for family gatherings and everyday sensorial delights, our wonderful Italian cooks will introduce you to the joy of selecting ingredients in season, preparing and cooking all to be tasted and enjoyed by all.
Classes may be built into a complete program including many gastronomic pleasures such as wine & oil tastings, honey & cheese sampling, with visits to specialist food centres & markets, experiencing the very best of all Umbrian cuisine with meals in carefully selected restaurants and typical trattorie.
The experience continues as we introduce the variety and freshness of traditional, home-based cuisine that is the UMBRIAN table including the specialist products made with a great respect for the earth and the seasons.
pasta and sauces
This a 3-hour course including 2 pasta dishes, choosing from a great variety of hand-made pastas with a simple sauce and another more complex or elaborate sauce to use with dried pastas. Some suggestions to consider are gnocchi or umbrichelli with fresh tomato, tagliatelle with mushroom and sausage, lasagne either as traditional or with mushroom and bechamel, ravioli stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach OR with sausage and mushrooms - with butter and sage. Combined with spaghetti alla carbonara, tortiglioni all’amatriciana, ragù or radicchio e gorgonzola Or a polenta with tomato or tomato & sausage, penne all’arrabbiata, OR, a variety of risotto including porcini mushrooms and truffles.
Ask for our complete list of options and for suggestions of combining the choices of hand-made pastas and complex sauces
pizza e pane
Stuzzichini (snacks/appetizers) include a whole range of tasty nibbles just perfect for entertaining. It can also include bite-size pizza pieces as well as some specialist breads and yeast recipes.
Courses may typically include a selection of:
- lumachelle (tasty, small snail-shaped savourey buns with pieces of cured and cooked meats and cheese)
- bocconcini appetitosi (similar to lumachelle but made into small rounds)
- pizza with a variety of typical toppings
- "Torte salate ripiene" (a celebration bread also known as Pane di Pasqua) - very typically Orvietani – is a kind of cheese bread
dolce e torte
This is a 3-hour course (for up to 2 people - more people increases the time) with a choice from a variety of options that includes typical desserts, cakes and tarts.
The following suggests a combination of options to include in one class:
- Strawberry and Cream cake & Jam tart
- Fruit and cream cake & Chocolate cake
- Cream and almond tart & Pear cake
- Short bread biscuits (pastry biscuits) & Saint Honoré (cake with 2 types of cream and eclairs)
Other selections might include be:
- Torta di mele (apple tart)
- Tiramisù - classical or with strawberries
- Ciambellone (another very special Easter treat) with ricotta and chocolate
If you are interested in all things sweet, ask for our complete list of options OR tell us what you would like to learn to make
secondi e contorni
Second (or main) courses typically include a selection of side dishes and may also be combined with a dessert.
Some popular options to choose from are Saltimbocca alla Romana (veal with sage), Polpette e polpettone (meatballs), Involtini (wrapped parcels),Pollo coi peperoni (chicken & peppers), Ossobuco (veal stew), Coniglio in padella (pancooked rabbit), among many others. There are also fish options for every course.
Some of the special side dishes included as accompaniaments are Patate arrosto (special roast potatoes - or done in a pan or pureed), a variety of special roasted or grilled tomatoes, zuccini, peppers, eggplant or the very special Pepepronata, Piselli con prosciutto cotto e cipolla (peas with light streaky bacon & onion), Broccolo lesso ripassato al forno e gratinato con besciamella e finocchio (broccoli roasted and pureed or with a beschamel sauce and fennel).
Ask us for a complete list of options and how best to combine them
Our cookery courses provide opportunities for both professional chefs as well as home-based cooking that follows the genuine, heart-felt traditions of the land. All Italians are passionate about food and the authentic tastes that define their own regions. Our cooking courses, therefore, are always a complete cultural experience allowing you to become immersed in the countryside that produces the most wonderful, freshest ingredients, according to the season. With both types of cooking classes you can try your hand at making homemade pasta or gnocchi, bite into the freshest flavours picked straight from the vines, drink in the aromas of the woodland truffles, soak up the home-baked breads with olive oil made from olives grown only in the region and drizzle locally produced honey over the best pecorino cheeses.
Depending on whether it is a group class or an individual class, the courses may be run in a fabulous agriturismo that also provides accommodation, with swimming pool, commercial kitchen, great tasting cellars and many other advantages, or in the family kitchens of the cook, all located in beautiful pastoral settings, in the countryside around Orvieto. For genuine Italian cooking, whether by professionals for professionals or presented by great cooks for all comers, the classes are all about touch, feel, smell, passion and food.
IT IS LIFE ITSELF AND LIFE IS GOOD, LIFE IS SWEET.