Several weeks ago, I had the chance to attend a cooking class held at a winery. The winery is up in the hills about 45 minutes from Vicenza and was absolutely gorgeous. We started our visit by helping the owner and his son finish the last of the harvest. And by helping, I mean we all picked a bunch of grapes and posed for pictures.
After our little jaunt through the vineyard, we headed inside to get down to the real business of the day - cooking! We all pitched in to help make a soup, homemade pasta, a meat dish, and a cake. And of course we sampled wines while we chopped and stirred.
Cooking the food was certainly fun, but eating it was even better. We started with the pasta, which had a fabulous sauce made of chopped walnuts, garlic, basil, and heavy cream.
The next course was the soup, which is typically served before the pasta but because it needed to simmer a little longer we had it for our second course. The soup started with a "soffritto," which is carrots, celery, and onions. After that had cooked for awhile, we added tomato sauce, beans, and water and let it simmer for a couple hours. At the end, we added some spelt wheat.
The meat dish was simply a beef loin that we put in a roasting pan with mushrooms and onions, added some water, and cooked in the oven for a few hours. The mushrooms contributed a ton of flavor and it was delicious served with polenta.
The best part of the meal though was dessert. My friends and I had a tough time thinking of anything to compare this cake to, but it was basically a dough that was chilled, rolled out, and baked with a layer of cream (almost like a custard) in the middle.
It was an amazing meal, and the fact that we had helped prepare it made it even better. The winery holds classes like this once a month, so I'm thinking another visit might be in order!
