Day 2

I woke up this morning feeling much better. I am glad I made myself stay up for as long as I did, so that I now feel accustom to the time difference. This morning we have our first Italian Cuisine class. We met Chef Polegri at the restaurant at 7. Chef decided the best way to get us started was to let us put our stuff down and just go and get breakfast. A very short walk later we walked in to an awesome coffee house. You can see the Italian tradition behind pastry and cappuccino for breakfast each morning, because as soon as the doors opened there were plenty of customers. The cappuccino is addicting. It is fresh and strong, it doesn't really need sweetener because its not extremely bitter, but if you do add sugar they have all natural sugar that doesn't overwhelm the flavor of the espresso. The pastries at the shop are hand made fresh every day. They are exquisitely made. Chef explained what each of them are and some of the Orvietan history about them. Such as the Orvietan bread traditionally doesn't have salt because the bakers long ago during a dictatorial reign of one of the popes, who had put a tax on salt, declined to use salt rather than pay the tax. I had a sweet roll, with a zuppa inglese custard. After we sat there talking a little about history and sipping our cappuccino, we went back to the restaurant to talk about regional Italian cooking itself. We started with Orvietan cooking, because, duh, thats where we are, and also we are getting certified with a certificate from the Umbrian government for being trained in Umbrian cusine. Italian regional cooking is really just based on self sustainability. Umbria was traditionally poorer and subject to droughts. They used what they had available. You would never see a T-Bone steak in classical Umbrian cooking, because they relied on the cattle too much for milk and labor among many things. However in Florence, the rich bastards had horses so they got to have their T-bones. The day was divided between 2 groups of students. My group, the morning group, would make lunch for all of us, 20 in total. The afternoon group would be making dinner. The lunch menu was fresh pasta with amatriciana sauce, porchetta, which is an Umbrian classic dish of a pork belly rolled with wild fennel, and pretty much whatever you want. We used wild fennel, which is awesome, polish sausages, prunes, garlic, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Everyone that was there when Chef Polegri was in Indy will know the Porchetta, but its much different with the available ingredients. We also made a sponge cake with zuppa anglaise, chocolate ganche, and a red wine simple syrup. The kitchen itself is awesome. Lots of windows, a screen door that opens to a patio to let the air in, lots of space that was carefully planned for everything that needs to be done. The patio itself has Chef Polegri's herb garden. There are 3-foot tall bay leaf trees, which they use fresh, not dried, there was rosemary which was blossoming, the basil looked better than anything I've seen in the states and it was still very small. He also has fresh sage and oregano just starting to grow. His plan is to use us while we are here to expand his garden. Orvieto itself is a sustainable community and so is the Chef's restaurant. All the bread and pasta is made in house. Today I watched one of his chefs break down a huge piece of beef. It was the ribs, the spine, the tenderloin, and the strip loin with all the usable and unusable trim. He had one of the students do just what we did in class...help break it down and figure out the food cost. This was the most relaxed experience Ive had in the kitchen, it was laid back, we didn't really care about wearing hats, didn't care about meeting any deadline for when the food needed to be done, we changed the recipes many times to fit what we really wanted to eat, what we had on hand, and any mistakes that could have been made. So to say the least, lunch was awesome, we made the food, then we were able to sit and join the rest of the group while it was served to us. Its a great experience to receive excellent food in a restaurant and know you had a hand in creating it. After lunch the morning group was allowed to leave until we needed to be back for dinner. I spent the afternoon exploring the shops of Orvieto with some group mates. Dinner later consisted of a potato flan, wild boar stew, bean soup, tiramisu (which Jennifer helped to make and she was happy it turned out better than the pastry final) fresh chicory sauteed with garlic, and spinach and cheese filled pastries with a red pepper and balsamic vinegar sauce. So yeah, I have had some amazing food here to say the least (potato flan and chicory are weird...). After dinner we all went out to local bar. Its a great place we found with outdoor seating in a square that is popular hang out. It was a little cold tonight, but good beer, good and odd conversation, so we had fun. Although I'll leave out some antics and some of the dirty words the Italian girls have been teaching us. Tomorrow the agenda is a 8 am meet at the restaurant and a tour of Orvieto Part 1. I am sure to have a lot of pictures of the city.