Teams made up of Kelly and Terry along with Shelly and Michelle try the "well" method of preparing fresh pasta.
Congratulations to all the students for a wonderful job in pasta making. Three teams of two students each were joined by kitchen assistant Quinn Donovan. The cooks practiced using the "well" method to make their dough, and they experimented with using different flour combinations (all purpose, semolina, and Italian "00") to make both rolled and stuffed pasta. They created rolled and cut pasta, cavatelli, and filled products. The filled pasta included crabmeat ravioli (with mascarpone cheese, parsley, and lemon); ravioli with lobster filling (which included a lobster filling made with shallots, garlic, brandy, white wine, plum tomatoes, tomato juice, tarragon, parsley, and cream) served in a lobster and shrimp infused sauce) and a butternut squash ravioli (which included crushed amaretti cookies and Italian fruit chutney--"Mostarda di Frutta" in the filling) served with a parmesan cheese sauce (made with vegetable stock, cream, parmesan and vermouth).
Students prepared 6 different sauces, which augmented sauces prepared ahead by Chef Wardle. The sauce options included: Mushroom Sauce with Dried Porcini; Three Cheese Sauce (Gorgonzola, Parmesan, and Italian fontina); Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto Pasta with Shrimp; Meat Sauce (with dry porcini, pancetta, beef, veal, pork, and red wine); Puttanesca Sauce (with anchovy fillets, capers, olives); Sausage Sauce (with Italian sweet sausace, onions, garlic, tomatoes, white wine, brandy, rosemary, red pepper, cream, and parmesan); Aubergine Sauce (eggplant sauce with sun-dried tomatoes, sunflower seeds, chilli flakes, pine nuts, lemon juice, tomatoes, and garlic).
Desserts and treats included Pastry Chef Elizabeth Katz's recipe of Amaretti and Ricotta Crocchette with Three Sauces (mango-caramel sauce, chocolate sauce, and lemon curd all made by Chef Wardle). Additionally, students enjoyed discovering that ravioli can be sweet as well as savory--they enjoyed making dark chocolate ravioli with white chocolate and cream cheese filling (garnished with vanilla cream sauce and raspberry finishing sauce).
Additionally, students had homemade rosemary focaccia and a selection of red or white Italian wine.
What a feast! Leftovers were glady taken home for waiting family and friends.
Teams made up of Kelly and Terry along with Shelly and Michelle try the "well" method of preparing fresh pasta.
Teams made up of Kelly and Terry along with Shelly and Michelle try the "well" method of preparing fresh pasta.
Lobster ravioli is a successful first effort at stuffed pasta for a team of students.
Shelly and Michelle roll their pasta for butternut squash stuffed ravioli, with Quinn watching and assisting.
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