Cooking at Zepplin's

Today we had our cooking class with Chef Lorenzo, one of the best chefs in Italy, at the restaurant Zepplin's. Chef took us to the market to get fresh food. He knows almost all the vendors and likes to joke and give them a hard time, but he makes sure he buys from a variety of vendors so that no one gets their feelings hurt. This guy told us that his farm is near a volcanic lake, so that's why he's able to grow some of his produce outside of the normal season. Here he's weighing some pumpkin for us.

The cheese and meat guy. We learned about REAL parmesan cheese: Parmagiana Romana (made in Parma, get it?) And each wheel is stamped to prove that its the real deal.

Chef Lorenzo making caffe and cappuccino for us. I think I had four total that day. Coffee is SUPER strong here, but SOOOO good. 

That's one of the students at Zepplin's, Gabe. They're Americans who come to study with Chef Lorenzo. We've made good friends with them.

There was a long dough process (I won't show all the pictures) but a group made dough for pasta, pizza, and focaccia. I like the way Chef works, he just made up the menu on the spot depending on what we got from the market and what they had in the fridge. No measuring or anything, it's just made up as you go.

 home made orrecchie pasta (lit. ears).

After lots of chopping, stirring, drinking "vino?", rolling, mixing, "more vino?", baking, stewing(?) and frying, "who wants more vino?", this is what we ate for dinner:

fried artichokes

 four cheese pizza (delicious!)

mozzerella

 tomato, cheese, and olive pizza

  orrecchie pasta with broccoli sauce (ya I chopped all that broccoli, and sang the "choppin broccoli" snl song the entire time).

 lamb stew (put specially on the menu for this Jews :), turnips and salad

 and arguably the best thing we made: coffee mouse! served with orange and ginger gelato and a biscotti.

We were all so incredibly full afterwards, I could barely finish everything. And it didn't help that Vito Paulo kept offering more vino, grappa, lemoncello, more wine, different grappa... so on and so forth...

January 27-

Our wine tasting at Zepplin's. We learned about sparkling white ("spumante" because you can only call it champagne in Champagna France), sweet whites, and the red chianti. How to pour, drink, smell, check the color, check if the cork is moldy...? I'm not sure I learned a whole lot, but I drank a lot, and that was good.

Zepplin's offered us a discount on their specialty menu, and because I couldn't have the wild boar, I got the truffle menu which was amazing! Truffle pasta, grilled cheese (literally cheese on the grill) with truffle sauce, and chocolate mousse.