Day 49 & Day 50: The Italian Job

Starring Darina Allan, Rory O' Connell & Gillian Hegarty.

Well, the last two days, Monday and Tuesday were very challenging as we had a two day pasta workshop in the school. Monday's demonstration with Gillian Hegarty covered various types of pasta from Penne; Pici; Stringozzi; Agnolotti; Tortelli to name but a few.

If you are keen on Italian cooking, then a book to check out is The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazen.We covered one of Marcella's recipes- Tortellini with Parsley and Ricotta which is well worth checking out.

Gillian Hegarty, a brilliant teacher on the course demonstrated Ravioli with Sage Butter, Fettuccine all' Alfredo and Lasagne Verde before Darina wrapped up the demo with a delicious Tira Misu.

Tuesday: The shiny pasta roller above was something I wanted to use since I started the course and today was the day. I have a whole new love for zero zero flour and made a yummy Lasagne Verde but I didn't blanch the pasta long enough so the pasta sheets were a bit tough. It really is all in the learning curve, here's one of the sheets I made:

Which went into this yummy Lagagne Verde:

As well as pasta, it was all bread day, lots and lots of bread as you can see. My teacher wouldn't let me leave the kitchen until the breads were 100% perfect. I got there in the end...

The last two days was non-stop, so I didn't get pics of this afternoon's demonstration.