Wednesday, May 23rd -- Today was a full day of cooking class beginning at 10:00 am when we went on a shopping expedition with Silvestro for the day's provisions.  We began again at the fresh produce market.  It's interesting that none of the produce is touched or picked by the buyers.  It is expected that a produce worker would be asked to pick whatever amount is needed, and bag the item for you.  Silvestro likened it to someone coming into your house and touching your personal belongings.  It's rude and simply not done.  Besides the fresh produce and bread, we went to a fresh fish market outside the city walls.  Fish is displayed on a steel table, no ice used at all.  We were told that the table is refrigerated from beneath, but its appearance is off putting for an American shopper used to seeing fish kept on ice. Silvestro selected mussels for Donna and me, and two kinds of fish that we would cook for both and dinner -- fillets of bronzino for lunch, and whole sea bass for dinner.

We returned to the school and learned to make two more kinds of pasta, one that is pulled with a knife and then rolled back over your finger to expose a large, fractured surface area to capture the sauce (orechetti), and the other a very thin tube created by rolling a small dough ball onto a twisted metal rod. The dough used was the same combination of 70% white and 30$ durham flour.

For lunch we had the bronzino fillets baked in parchment paper, the orechetti with a broccoli rob sauce, arugula salad, and fresh apricots for dessert. For dinner we had the pasta tubes with a tomato sauce, the sea bass grilled, cooked chicory (boiled and then sauteed with garlic and peporacini), and a baked pear with vin cotta and left over ricotta from yesterday's dessert.



Beautiful Produce at Market



Tomatos at Market



Martinez Cafe where we met each morning



Chicken at Market



Fish Market



Squid at Market



Only refrigerator at School



Silvestro's Classroom



Guiseppi and Karen



Donna Picking Mint for a Recipe



Karen Using Her Own Drying Technique



The Girls in Class



Tube Pasta Made in Class

Grilled Sea Bass (Daniel's Creation)



Tomato Sauce for Pasta

Silvestro gave us a lesson on Italian phrases that should come in handy, but who could possibly remember any of them.  Okay, I got one -- salve, for hello rather than the far more informatl ciao.  We had a few wines, but the rose was particularly enjoyable.  We'll get a listing of the wines before we leave.  We finished up around 10:00 pm and headed back to our hotel for a "early" evening. tomorrow we head out to a coastal town - Otranto on the Adriatic.