Thursday was another beautiful day weather-wise. After another leisurely outdoor breakfast, we headed to the conference room to listen to a talk by Andrea Ferrante, the president of the AIAB, or the Associazione Italiana Agricoltura Biologica. You can read the lecture at this link. Andrea spoke with us all morning, as we moved our class outside to take advantage of the good weather.
For lunch, our primi was fresh gnocchi with tomato-basil sauce. Enzo bought the gnocchi in a town nearby and they were delicious: dense and pillowy soft, like little squishy puffs in your mouth. Enzo made the sauce himself, and it was very nice: full of fresh vegetable flavor with just a little kick of red pepper!
Our secondi was salami, fresh cheese, and a very diverse salad. The cheese was a gamey and earthy semi-hard cheese - reminded me of fontina - and was very tasty, especially in conjunction with the always excellent flavor of the salami. The salad was divine: Enzo had combined a whole bunch of lettuces with arugula, cucumber, radish, and, most enticingly, fennel. Tossed with some balsamic, olive oil, and salt, it was the perfect early summer salad.
After lunch, some of us decided to go into town to grab gelato and do a bit of exploring. Chiara was nice enough to give us a ride down the hill, and we cruised by the lakeside for a bit before heading to the square in town for ice cream. Italy closes down almost entirely around lunch hours - siesta is very important - and only the gelato and coffee places remain open for business.
We had some gelato, including a wonderful hazelnut-chocolate-pistachio flavor, and walked through the medieval village of Bolsena. Chiara explained that the archways in the thick brick walls were the original medieval doors: set up so the inhabitants could entirely lock the town up at night. As Bolsena attracted many pilgrims due to its convenient location in the middle of the route to Rome, the doors also served the purpose of keeping possibly disease-ridden pilgrims out of the city's confines - not a bad security system.
Amanda and I walked up to the castle which overlooks the town and the lake below it, enjoying some truly spectacular views. It's surprising that Bolsena is not better known in the USA - but not a bad thing for us!
After a rather sweaty walk back up the hill, it was time for a lesson in pasta making. Our host and hostess from La Tana Della Orso' returned to show us how to make fettucini. Everyone donned aprons and got to work with the dough - Farina brand, which is apparently quite high in quality.
Our ever-patient instructor.
Working the egg into the flour. This is harder then it looks: the ratio of egg to flour and water must be correct.
A rolled out and compete pasta sheet.
Working the pasta dough requires some serious bicep strength! Now you know why Italian women often have excellent arms.
Antonio works with the pasta, exposing his Italian roots!
Everyone got in on the act.
Completed sheets of pasta. These can be kept under cloth for a few hours, or refrigerated for no more then a day. Freezing fresh pasta is not an option!
The sheets of pasta are folded over and then cut. The motion is more akin to sawing then chopping - a fairly blunt knife is used.
The finished project - rather photogenic, don't you think?
After the pasta was finished, we had a break, then headed for the conference room, to give the presentations we had prepared the previous day on food commodities. One group discussed coffee, and the other discussed tomatoes. Details from the coffee discussion can be found here.
The weather began to cool down dramatically around dinner time - weather patterns here are definitely affected by the close proximity of the lake. We put on our windbreakers and gathered around the dinner table, after a little snack of fresh fava beans and aged pecorino - an unusual but oddly compelling flavor combination!
The evening's primi was the fettucini we had made earlier in the day, served with Enzo's excellent tomato-basil sauce. The fettucini was perfectly chewy, and had the wonderful rustic taste that only hand-made pasta can deliver.
The secondi was composed of sausage, fresh salad, and a lovely rosti-like thing made from the potatoes and carrots from lunch. This was combined with fresh egg and cooked in a pan over a griddle - excellent, especially with a bit of mustard.
Dessert was a traditional Italian torta or cake, with pine nuts and what seemed to be a bit of citrus flavoring. This was rustic, simple, and very good - a quintessential Italian country dessert.
By nine o' clock, the sun still hadn't gone down - summer days last a long time in Italy. The evening was spent watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - doubtless food and gender analysis of the film will follow!
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