Now, Abruzzo

Thu 10/10/2013
Now…..Abruzzo

We left Castel Madama for Santo Stefano di Sessanio in Abruzzo and drove through beautiful mountains to reach our lodgings, La Locando sul Lago shortly before lunch. Lunch was delicious…a 1^st course of fettucine with saffron, ricotta, parmesan on a parmesan crisp and topped with a crispy piece of pancetta, then salad, then some grilled lamb chops then a dessert of a sort of light torte with chocolate and pear. And wine of course.

Then we began our first cooking class with Mamma Lucia presiding over our pasta making. The recipe is a bit different than the one we are used to. We used a mixture of semolina flour and 00 flour and eggs. It makes a stiff dough that took lots of muscle to knead to smoothness. Then we rolled it by hand into a disc about 2 ½ feet wide. We cut 2 large ravioli ( espresso saucer size) from each disc, then trimmed the disc to a rectangle and cut strips the width of our CHITARRA (means "guitar")

Chitarra

and cuts the pasta with wire strings with different widths between the strings on each side) and cut fettucine on one side of the chitarra and chitarra pasta (thin spaghetti) on the other side. From the scraps we made malfatti (translates as "badly cut") and a few farfalle just for fun. We still had one fat rectangle left for using in a lasagna.  We filled our giant ravioli with a ricotta, egg, parmesan, parsley mixture. Then into the kitchen for Mamma to demonstrate a simple tomato sauce and Chef Edouardo to demonstrate a simple but elegant sauce of thin strips of smoked prosciutto, fresh porcini mushrooms, white wine and truffle paste. By now it had been perhaps 2-3 hours since lunch and our instructors thought we might be weakening from hunger so Edouardo's beautiful sauce was put on our freshly made chitarra and served to us with a glass of white wine while we continued to watch Mamma finish off her sauce preparation. Back to our dining room/ classroom to put together our lasagna with our remaining pasta pieces. At the end of our session, our host, Leonardo, gave us out very own chitarra!

Edouardo

Mamma Lucia

Leonardo then decided to walk us up a loooong hill to the village of Santo Stefano di Sessanio, a town that had been long deserted until about 18 years ago when a wealthy local guy bought up most of the property and painstakingly restored it with compulsive historical accuracy. There are now many small, local businesses in the villages selling traditional products and there are a couple of hotels and restaurants. Though it was dark, and the businesses were closed, it was an impressive place.

Santo Stefano di Sessanio during the daytime

Once back from out trek, we sat around the dining room chatting with Leonardo, a crazily energetic guy with lots of ideas. After a couple hours, Leonardo told the waiter to bring us a little of our lasagna and a ravioli and some wine. We somehow managed to put that away and after yet more conversation we went to bed…..definitely not hungry!