Octopus antipasto

Chef Simone demonstrated how to prepare octopus and potato tortino, a Sicilian dish.

Bread, foccacia, pizza

Today we learned six different bread and focaccia recipes, in addition to a basic dough for pizza Margherita. It was a long day in a hot kitchen, with three ovens in operation.

In Italy they use many different types of flour, and ancient recipes and techniques have been perfected over the centuries based on the particular qualities of each flour. I do believe they would scoff at the notion of all-purpose flour so popular in the United States.

Because of this, I'm not certain how well these dough recipes would work without the benefit of these various flours.

Tip of the Day: Substitute malt for sugar in dough recipes. It adds not only sweetness, but also a bit of color and flavor.

Here is Chef Gino explaining the birth of ciabatta, helpfully interpreted by Bridgit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_017n7Z-l6I

In Uniform

Cutting grissini stirati. Chef Gino, center, told us, "The first job you do each day in an Italian restaurant is to prepare the daily bread and grissini". Grissini stirati (stretched grissini) are like breadsticks.

Student Housing and the Police

Columbia, Mexico and USA are now represented in our small room. We three share a toilet with a fouth woman and it was quite a scene getting everyone turned out on time this morning.

There was a late night row in our dorm courtyard involving young drunken aspiring chefs from across the globe meeting the likes of an apparently sober whack job. I watched it unfold from my balcony. Mama Mia!

The carabinieri arrived around 2:00 a.m., but the show was over by that time, except for the perp claiming to be the victim. Today, our class was visited by the friendly carabinieri again, and they are seen here being assisted by the English interpreter.

As for class, school orientation is a drudgery in any language. We did prep work for four italian bread recipes, which we will bake tomorrow morning during our first actual cooking class. Later this week, pizza making!

Uniforms Issued Tomorrow

A photo of our school, the castle, taken from student housing dining hall.

Classes begin tomorrow and I am both excited and a little nervous. The Italian Culinary Institute for Foreigners is like the United Nations, with many different countries represented and languages spoken. World peace through Italian cooking? Italian food conquering the world?

http://m.npr.org/story/137904978?url=/books/titles/137904978/how-italian-food-conquered-the-world

Many of the students are young. I could be the mother of my classmates. That is, if I had born children by foreign men later in life. They seem genuinely nice, outgoing and brimming with enthusiasm. I shall try not to hate them.

Tomorrow we are provided uniforms. Tonight, I get settled into my room, which I share with a young woman from Columbia, and maybe another person. I've heard two people comment that it is much calmer now that the Brazilians have left. I just smiled and nodded, because although spoken in English, I continue still not to fully understand the words spoken to me.

Festival delle Sagre

Asti plays annual host to Festival delle Sagre, a food and wine event featuring over 40 small Piemontese villages. A park is dedicated to the food and wine staging, each town proudly serving its specialty dishes from solidly constructed booths evocative of countryside homes.

I heard not a word of English among the several hundred people in attendance. I walked the park for an hour, feeling an equal measure of wonder and confusion, before I understood the protocol-- Each village house sells tickets for food redeemed at that specific site; tickets are sold an hour before the food is available; it's perfectly acceptable to knock to the ground anyone standing between you and the food server, etc.

But what I couldn't wrap my brain around was this-- for the price of about 75 cents, you are provided an empty glass to be worn around the neck in a pastic Festival holder. With this investment, you get free wine from each village vendor. Three different villages explained this to me, slowly, before I understood that "gratis" really did mean free. They were very patient with me, though I certainly appeared the idiot of several villages. This, before the wine was served.

2 Minutes Inside Asti's St. Secondo

There is an underground crypt where visitors can see the silver urn containing the ashes of this city's patron saint. My video is here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_Z0Z-Fh9Eo&feature=youtube_gdata_player

(I exercised a little videographer discretion and dropped the camera to my waist when I visited the alter, to create the visual effect of kneeling. For this I will surely burn in hell.)