Day 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30

Wow, I suddenly got really bad at this. Its been busy though so give me a break. Besides there wasn't too much to write about each day and I didn't want to bore anyone. This weekend I just worked at the restaurant. I did 10 hours on Saturday which was actually a lot of fun. We weren't busy but weekends most of the other study abroad group goes away so there are more opportunities to do some cooking. I made 2 sauces, one pomodoro sauce that they use in the hot line and I made an amatriciana sauce with guanchale which is cured pork cheek. The pasta sauce was actually for a party of 60 that was coming in for lunch on Sunday. I made it on my own with some instructions on how to get it going and the sous chef Carlo tried it when it was nearly done and all it needed was just a bit more salt, so I was happy with my performance. It was weird the next day to see the sauce that I made go out to 60 people. Not a lot of it was left afterwards either. That was an interesting experience in itself. I had never plated for that many people at once before. The starter of the meal was a salume (meat) and cheese plate with a small salad, foccacia, and bruschetta. The second course was umbrichelli, a think spaghetti style pasta with the sauce I made. The third course was a ricotta mouse with a chocolate sauce. When we began we setting out 60 plates, then we just went at it assembly line style, placing one component at a time. We had 4 of us working on it, so it only took about 10 minutes at the most. As soon as those plates went out we repeated the process for dessert. It was very cool. The only thing that sucks about that is the dishes afterwards. So I only worked the lunch shift on Sunday, I took the afternoon off to get some homework done. I also went out to eat with friends, the only restaurant I had eaten at was Zeppelin, at least in Orvieto. We went to what has become one of our favorite places, Pizzaria Charlie's. Its interesting because they have a German atmosphere almost, with German beer on tap, but the food is Italian. The beer was good. The pizza was amazing, I am definitely taking my mom and sister there when they are in town. Monday through Wednesday, you can guess I am sure. Class, work, class, work, class, work. Of course their are highlights....excellent food as usual, strange gelato like cigar gelato. Yes I said cigar. Chef had heard of people doing tabacco gelato before so he got 2 cigars, we boiled the tabacco in simple syrup, the usual eggs, cream and sugar went in there and viola, cigar gelato. It is one of the most interesting things you may ever taste, but I liked it. Of course we had discussions only afterwards if it is even healthy to eat it at all. We also had a few more Italian language classes this week. I am actually not that bad at reading Italian and my pronounciation is good when I am speaking although I am a slow reader. I think that's going to take some time though. I still manage to muddle my way through when we go somewhere they don't speak English though. We also had our fourth wine class today. It was sparkling wines or spumanti in Italiano. They were pretty good. Although the reds tasted just like grape juice not like wine at all, so that was interesting. Our next and final wine tasting is with sweet wines. That's on Thursday which unfortunately I will have to miss, because I am leaving tomorrow, right after class to catch a plane to England. We will be in London for Thursday night, Friday, and Saturday morning and then it is off to Dublin for Saturday night, all day Sunday and Monday morning. Its going to be a blast and I will be sure to keep better track of the trip and take plenty of pictures.

Day 25

Today we had another group outing. Our first stop for our tour was a local butcher shop. This was very fascinating. We walked in to a large sized warehouse, we got some cloth white coats to wear over our clothes and we guided in to see a whole pig just hanging in the hallway. It had just been gutted and then hung up and was just sitting there. We watched one of the butchers working on some ribs, his skill was amazing, we knew that none of us could accomplish the same task with the precision and speed that he had. The hanging pig turned out to be a demo for us. A customer had ordered a porchetta which is a popular Umbrian dish. It can be a piece of pork belly with pork liver and fennel, but traditionally you will find all over Orvieto places that will roast the pig whole. That is what we say prepared. The butcher removed the spine, the leg bones, the remaining organs, and the ribs then took it to a separate room where he put in a ton of wild fennel, garlic, rosemary, pork liver, salt and pepper. Then he sewed up the entire thing with a metal pole inside and we watched him put it in a very large oven to be slow roasted for the customer. It was pretty cool to watch the process, I got most of it on video so see Facebook soon. We also got to see them make sausage, at least part of the process, they had already grinded the meat and mixed it with the herbs and were now putting it into casings. The machine they used was extremely fast. They easily put out a literal ton of sausage in one day. We walked through the entire plant, it was extremely well kept for, very clean and well organized. They even did a lot of cured meats. We finished the tour with a tasting of some of the cured meats they had and of course some porchetta. The group left and our next stop was an olive oil mill. The mill also produced wine. The olive oil production was cool to learn about though. They say in the fall when its harvest time, they basically work 24 hours a day. They pick olives in the daylight and by night they are in the mill pressing olive oil but of course it will be fun because they always will be able to sample a little of the very first batch. We got offers to help them during harvest time if we are ever in Italy at the time. We got to sample the olive oil ourselves along with some of their other creations like roasted artichokes in olive oil and a black truffle spread. We all of course bought souveniers and then we were off to lunch. We didn't have to drive very far, I believe Chef has been to this restaurant before, he actually had his wife and son meet us there for lunch. It was an excellent meal, one of my favorites this entire trip. They started us out with several kinds of pizza. Then we got some fresh made pasta with an excellent ragu that you just couldn't stop eating, and you didnt have to either, they kept on coming around with platters of it if you wanted seconds. I didn't although I was tempted. It's a good thing I didnt because the third course was fire grilled chicken, ribs and sausage. The chicken was extremely good with the skin extra crispy and the sausages were probably the best I've ever had. After lunch we were off to our final destination, the park of monsters. Legend goes that a single man spent his life carving all of the statues that are in the park. There are tons of them. Huge monstrosities that i dont know how one person could do on their own. My favorite was the giant turtle that was about 10 feet high and 20 feet long, we couldnt get close enough to that one though because some of them they had blocked off. I definitely want to visit that park again one day again. After our visit there we headed on home. It was a shorter day than we were used to, but it was a lot of fun and it was a lot closer, no more than an hour on the bus in between destinations. Once we got back we went out for a while, but I didn't stay out too late, a lot of people were going to Rome the next day and I was planning on working at the restaurant this weekend.

Day 24

This morning I have my fourth Latin cuisine class. We are moving on to South American Cuisine today and the menu is ok. It does however have one of my least favorite ingredients, hearts of palm. I think they are disgusting personally and we were going to have to make a hearts of palm soup. However I said right away to my class that I wanted to do it, because I like making good soups and I wanted to see if I could accomplish it with something I hate. Fortunately or unfortunately we couldn't find hearts of palm in Italy. Oh well, darn. Instead we got a recipe for posole, a hominy and pork stew. I spent a full 4 hours just simmering it and working on it. It ended up being great, but I found that hominy is really hard to get fully cooked, it still wasn't after all that time. The rest of the menu was good as well, chicken roasted in a great sauce, crepes filled with apples and covered with a dulce de leche sauce, a tomato and onion salad, and swiss chard. It was a great lunch. Shortly afterwards our entire class got to stay around for Italian cuisine class. This is the group wide Italian cooking class that is part of our study abroad trip, its not part of my European cuisine class. The class focuses on Umbrian cuisine where we are staying and once we complete the course we will all get certificates from the Umbrian government. Tonight's menu was some roast chickens stuffed with prunes and herbs, something that the restaurant does all the time. We also had some potato flans that I made, some fresh pasta with a shrimp and cream sauce, and some pear gelato for desert that was excellent as awesome. It was an awesome class really. We cleaned up after dinner and were able to go home. It was really a long day. I don't mind so much being at the restaurant all day if I'm working some internship hours, but two cooking classes in one day wears you out. So as usual I am just off to bed after class, I need some sleep and we have another group trip out of town tomorrow and the bus leaves at 8.

Day 23

Today I am just going to be at the restaurant all day as usual. I am scheduled to work front of the house in the morning. I think I am supposed to go in at 10, but of course I got there by 7 just because I like depriving myself of sleep and I want some hours. The advantage of getting here early is that no one will actually notice that I am supposed to be working front of the house. I just started helping out in the back right away doing dishes and prepping stuff for the morning European Cuisine class to use. That's just how I spent my morning. Working as much as I can and hiding from front of the house duties. Its easy to get away with since I think they like me working in the back of the house since I get a lot done. At least I get to do some interesting stuff. The full time interns say that I've earned my keep now so I can start watching them and helping on the hot line and with actual dishes in the restaurant. I spent some time watching them do a few tickets so I can see how they plate some of the dishes and what goes with what. It will take me a while to memorize everything. I gave up working at about 1 pm so we could eat lunch. Afterwards it was time to wait for our turn for European class. The subject was Central Italy today. Chef prepared a menu for us and we planned on getting done pretty quickly because we only had about 3.5 hours until we had a wine tasting class. We would be using a lot of leftovers today. We had some extra pasta dough from the morning class and some ground turkey that had to be used up. We ended up making canneloni, rolled pasta with the filling inside and then we lined them in a sheet pan and covered them with an eggplant sauce and some bechamel with cheese on top. It ended up being very good. We also made bruschetta, some cake for desert and the star of the day was large t-bone steaks for all of us. Chef had gotten a whole piece of veal that had to be broken down in to t-bones. So one of the students carved it up with the biggest cleaver I've ever seen and then we marinated the steaks in olive oil, rosemary and lemon. Steak was something we were all missing by this point, we have barely seen any beef while we have been eating over here and definitely not any steak. It was awesome. We cleaned up after dinner and we had wine tasting class as well. We covered Southern Italian wines today and there were a few that I thought were great, the others were probably a bit too bitter for me to want to drink. After we were done for the day I went home to finish up some homework and then get some sleep finally, at least I would actually be able to sleep in till 7 tomorrow.

Day 22

Wow, 22 days I've been here already. This trip is flying by. I was talking to some people about it today. There are a lot of girls here that spend a ton of time skyping their boyfriends and saying how much they miss them. There is a lot about home I miss and I know that I will be happy when I get home, but I have to live in the moment above all. Who knows if I'll ever be able to come back so I will savor every moment of this. There are of course certain people that I miss too, but I will see them again soon enough. Its not as if I don't keep in touch with people. Today I have World Cuisine, Middle East day 2. Of course I had to do another paper on the Middle East that was due today but I didn't realize we were doing another day so I had to quickly throw together a paper last night and once again not get enough sleep. Its a good thing we get all we can drink free cappucinnos. We started class quickly for once today, it was just get our recipes and go. It was going to be a simple menu today and everyone scrambled for the best recipes, unfortunately the best I could come by was a salad that was so simple. I took my time making it, trying to make it pretty, I took the required ingredients and used them all but kind of put a twist on some of them to make the recipe a bit better. Still by the time I finished it was a very boring salad. Luckily one of the other recipes was a spicy fava bean dip that we just incorporated into my dish and it was really good. The rest of the menu was great too, but its funny how much we stray from the recipes, Chef blames us for that, but he does it too. What was great about today was that I started putting together an archive of all of his crazy gelato recipes. We are still making gelatos based on the cuisine we are currently studying so today we did several middle east ones like the "Bedowin gelato" with dates boiled in red wine until reduced and then mixed with water and pureed and then we added sugar, cream, and milk. It was awesome. Lunch was great, we ate, cleaned up and then it was off to the apartment for me. I really wanted to sleep, but I forced myself to do homework which I am happy I did now. I ended up going back to the restaurant at 5 pm to start working, then of course we had an Italian language class at 6 until 8, which I still think is only semi-helpful. Still I am trying my best to learn what I can. After class I ate quickly and started helping out in the kitchen. I like working back there, doing anything I can, even the little things I know help a lot. I ended up staying till 11 to help with all the cleanup which I know the appreciate a lot. Still even after a long day I wasn't tired yet so I thought it would be a goodnight to share a bottle of wine with friends. Hopefully I won't regret it in the morning.

Day 21

Monday, back to school I go. This morning I have another Latin class. We are still doing Mexican cuisine but I am just exhausted. I ended up staying up to late and my feet are hurting from walking all over Rome. Oh well, it was worth it. The menu was decent today but not awesome. At least we got guacamole and one of us going to do a spicy salsa so of course we will be making some homemade tortilla chips. Then we have stuffed chiles, of course pablanos are pretty much impossible to get here so we have to use green peppers. Then we basically have just started calling Italian Parsley "Cilantro" because its all we have to substitute. We do the best we can. The thing we were looking forward to the most was the addition of caesar salad to the menu. We have a great group for Latin class. We all work together and a small menu like this is no problem for us. I worked on a lot of little things just helping prep and make some sauces to help out other groups. It was easy enough for us to put out a great menu with enough food for everyone that came with us and then some. Of course we have to actually get people to show up for lunch first. We always have too much leftovers but we can usually convince the full time interns to take it home or save it for lunch. Latin food is a welcome substitute to the Americans that have already been here for months. The food around here is great of course, but you just don't have a lot of options in this small town. You can go to a nicer restaurant like the Zeppelin or you can go to one of the 50 pizzarias around town. Then there are the random restaurants that are pretty much the version of fast food around here. They are always middle eastern cuisine restaurants that also happen to serve "hamburgers." The only good thing they have their is the "kebabs" which are a odd version of a Greek gyro, but they put some weird stuff on it like french fries and too much red cabbage. However some of the people with us have become obsessed with it so I question sometimes why they came. Anyways, lunch was great, we cleaned up and I just went home today. I wasn't on the schedule to intern today so I just took the time to get ahead on some homework. I did book some flights to England and Ireland though that I'll be going to in a few weeks. It will be a long 4.5 day weekend for us so it will be a nice break.

Day 20

Today was my first trip to Rome. I went with Sheldon another member of our study abroad group. We got up at 8:30 and our plan was to leave our house by 9 and walk down the train station. Orvieto is of course on top of a large hill so to get to the train station you have to walk down to the edge of town, about 20 minutes away and then take a trolley that goes down a steep side of the mountain to exit right in front of the station. You can walk down or up to Orvieto, there are stairs, but its not a fun climb, we are talking hundreds of steps and it can take about 45 minutes to get up there sometimes. The trolley takes just 2 minutes and it only costs you 1 euro to use it. We got to the train station and bought our tickets using their automated machines. It only cost us 7 euro each for the trip. The trip is pretty quick. There are two types of trains you can use, one is very fast and takes only about 45 minutes to get to Rome, the other takes about an hour and half. It just depends on what train you want to catch. Given the time we got there we just took the slow train, we didn't want to wait around for the fast one to get there cause we would still beat it there. We arrived in Rome at about 10:30 am. The first thing we did was look for the tour buses. They weren't hard to find. There are 4 different companies running tour buses through Rome. They all hit the major sites, but each have different ways of doing things. The one that was recommended to us was the Roma Christiana. It is a large double decker yellow bus that is apparently the best. For 17 euros you can use it for 24 hours straight, you get a card with the time you bought it stamped and that's when your time starts, so we bought ours at 11 am and we could use it till 11 am the next day. This bus also gave us free headphones to plug into their multilingual radio station that broadcasts historical information about all the sites we pass as you pass them. It is in 8 different languages and its really good information as well. It will also tell you what is coming up at each site as you pull near so you can decide if its something you want to get off to see. If you get off there are buses that come by every 10 minutes at the latest so you can just get back on there or at any of the other locations they stop as much as you want. Of course one of the first stops we came to was the coliseum, so that would be our first destination. It is very odd to turn down a street and see the ancient building looming right at the end of the road. Its right there still standing higher than the buildings around it. The bus took us around it and down a little bit, so you almost get to drive completely around it before you can get off. It gives you a great view and some great pictures if you are on the top deck of the bus which is in the open air. The crowds there were massive of course. Tons of tour groups and we definitely heard a lot of people speaking English. I started taking tons of pictures of course and even looking at the shops as we started to walk towards the coliseum. This place is definitely a tourist trap, there are souvenier stands everywhere, all the same ones too. They all have identical merchandise that is laid out in the exact same way, so if you miss one stand you will see the same thing again 100 feet away all over the tourists areas. As we were walking up to the entrance to go in, we were stopped by a guy asking if we wanted a tour. We thought it was a scam cause it was just a guy in some sunglasses and he talked like an American. He told us it was only 10 euros and it included a tour of the coliseum and the basilica of peter in chains along with the surrounding ruins. We decided to give it a chance. Luckily we were very wrong, we did indeed get a tour and an extremely good one. We had a guide that took us in through a group tour entrance that let us bipass a huge crowd and it was extremely informative. He gave us a lot of information that we wouldn't of otherwise known about particular parts of the coliseum. He showed us a view of the training grounds off to the side of the coliseum that is currently part of an archeological dig. It was where gladiators were held and trained as they awaited their fight in the arena. Then we were taken to the top level where we could look down into the ruins and he told us all about the battles, reenactments and traditions of the coliseum. It is estimated that over 700,000 lives were taken there, our tour guide joked that if we were in England it would be full of ghosts but since they have the Pope, there are none. The Romans would not only have gladiator battles but the original floor was wood, and at one time there was just a brick walled area underneath that could be filled with water within a day and then the could reenact naval battles by putting convicts in boats and tied so they couldnt get away and then they would be shot with arrows and ballistae. About 10 years ago they rebuilt part of the wooden floor to give people an idea of what it would have looked like. There was a lot I learned from it and I had known quite a bit already, but it was an excellent tour. After it was over we walked around a bit and took a bunch of pictures, even getting closer to the bottom for pictures of the lowest level. Of course we also hit the gift shop for some way overpriced merchandise. Altogether we were there for a few hours. It was enough time to allow the parade to start though. Apparently the weekend we came was part of a week long holiday and for the end they had a huge parade down one of the main streets next to the pyramid. Hundreds of people marched through the street in full military uniform, dressed as gladiators, women in traditional gowns and togas, and all followed by the emperor and his wife at the end with his praetorian guards. It was pretty cool to see. We walked down that long street looking at the shops, buying souveniers, we saw a lot of street performers including a pretty good Michael Jackson impersonator (see Facebook for pictures and video! haha). We saw a lot of excavation going on where they are working to uncover a lot of ancient ruins. I was amazed during the tour of the coliseum to realize just how long it went unprotected as a monument. It went unused and neglected for hundreds of years, even a lot of it was canibilized for iron and stone to the point where it was weakened and had to be reinforced to stay standing. We spent quite a bit of time walking until we decided to catch the bus and let it take us on a complete circuit so we could get an overview of everything. We saw the Vatican from the outside, but we had already decided to do that another day because you can spend a whole day just exploring there. The bus ride itself was a lot of fun and great information. It would be easy to get lost in Rome I think. I saw a lot of shops and restaurants all over the place as well that look worth exploring. We finally got tired at about 5 pm, we hadn't planned to head back to Orvieto that soon, but we hadnt eaten and our feet were starting to hurt. So we took the bus back to the train station and got the fast train back. Its a weird thing to be able to say you traveled to Rome and back in 12 hours. It was a great day though and I got a lot of good souveniers and gifts to take back with me. A picture of me in front of the coliseum is a good enough souvenier as it is though.

Day 19

Today is Saturday and I'll be spending the day at the restaurant today. All the full time interns work a 10 hour day at least there. They work the lunch shift from 10 am till 3:30 or earlier if they are expecting a party then they close the restaurant and come back at 5 pm and work until close. I told them I would like to do the same today. Its a great way to get some hours and some experience. So I went in at 10, I knew right away there wasn't going to be a whole lot to do. Today was a good opportunity to get some cleaning done around the restaurant. We dusted the tops of shelves, organized things to get to them easier, even flipped over tables to clean the undersides of them. It was enough to keep us busy for the afternoon. We also started prepping for a party that would be coming to the restaurant the next day. It would be a group of 25 so we were making lasagnas for them. The restaurant has a classic asparagus lasagna that they can make easily for large groups. One of the interns just cooked off asparagus until it was very tender and then pureed it. Of course with the asparagus was onions and peppers and some seasonings. Then they made a bechamel using a simple classic recipe. The pureed asparagus was folded into the bechamel to be the sauce for the lasagna. Then we used 3 large sheet pans and put a little of the sauce on the bottom and then used some lasagna pasta sheets that we already had made and put a layer down and then put more asparagus becahmel on top and spread it around. We repeated that for 5 layers in an assembly line fashion. I was in charge of putting down the sauce whenever they got a layer of pasta on. After they were done we baked them for about 25 minutes so they were partially cooked. You want to let the pasta start cooking, but you need to wait to finish it right before you serve it. We also made some roasted chicken breast for the party. We took some chicken breast and pounded it out then and then put an herb mixture on top and some prunes and then rolled it up with the stuffing inside it. They were tied and ready to roast off. They could easily be reheated for service. We got all of this accomplished and a lot of cleaning throughout the full day I put in. It was an interesting experience. They have a family style dinner for all the cooks and waiters for lunch and for dinner. Lunch, Carlo made an awesome gorgonzola cream sauce for some pasta. For dinner the paid interns made some Italian grilled cheese sandwiches with proscuitto on them and some tomato soup to go with it. I ended up staying till 11 pm just getting cleaned up and waiting on the final customers of the night to leave.

Day 18

This morning I got to sleep in a bit, which I was very happy to do. I worked my internship hours starting at 9 am. Once again I just started out with dishes. However today I got a welcome change. It was going to be a busy day at the restaurant. They were expecting a group of 90 for lunch and there was also a catering event off site that needed to be done. The catering group was just for 6 people, but all the food would be prepared at the restaurant and then transferred over to the hotel that the group was staying at which is really just a 5 minute walk from the restaurant. Since most of the staff had to stay there to work the huge lunch crowd, I got asked to go with one of the other full time interns to work the event. The guy I am going with is Peter. He's a student that is currently going to Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island, which is one of the best culinary schools in the country. He's from New York and is here on an 11 week internship for his school, he's only got about 4 weeks left. So I helped him get all the stuff we would need to take with us. You have to think of every contingency when you go off site. We needed serving plates, forks, knives, serving tools, platters...basically everything you can imagine even water and bread baskets. As soon as the hot food was ready we packed it up and took it and everything else we needed in one of the servers car to the hotel. It was much easier than carrying it all. We set up a buffet in the hotel's dining room and just waited around serving the 6 diners. It was over quickly though and we think it went well. It's still interesting to do that without someone there with us that speaks Italian. After we cleaned up and repacked everything I headed back to the restaurant for afternoon class. This class was interesting because we had a group member that was being waited on to leave with a group to go on a trip to the Almalfi Coast in Southern Italy for the weekend. So we had to work quickly and get dinner ready in about 2 hours so we could get cleaned up and everyone could leave to catch their train. It was fast paced, but the Chef and one of the other interns helped out where they could so we could still complete the lesson and get done on time. I made some fresh pasta and then a pumpkin, almond, parmesan, nutmeg, and honey filling. We were going to do tortellini out of them, but it takes a long time to shape that much pasta, so we quickly made raviolis out of the pasta. I served that with a sage butter sauce. The rest of the menu was a beef stew that was way over spiced by our team member. I like spicy stuff, but this was intense, it made a few of our instructors cringe. Dinner overall was good, it was just rushed, by the time we got everything done in that little time period, everyone was too amped up to be hungry. We saved the leftovers though. After dinner we cleaned up and all headed home. Some people are waiting till the morning to leave for other destinations in Italy. Tonight I am going to catch up on some homework, get a lot of sleep and hope that my cold will disappear overnight because I am sick of it. Tomorrow I am going to try to work some more internship hours and then Sunday I am planning a day trip to Rome.

Day 17

Today was a good day in a lot of ways...it completely sucked in some. We got up early today to make our second group trip out of the city. Today's destination was Perugia about an hour North of Orvieto. It is still in the Umbria region. Our group is going to be attending chocolate school at the Perugina Chocolate factory. We left from the restaurant at 7, but we stopped a few places so we didn't make it to the factory till around 10. The company itself appears to have corporate connections to nestle and to Calebaut, which we use at school. The school they run there is for anyone, its open to tourists to come through and run through a chocolate demo. So some of the stuff we did a lot of us were already familiar with. It was a lot of fun though. We all got aprons with the school of chocolate logo on them to take home. We started out by melting some white chocolate with some cream in a pan. They had a great set up for the purpose of these classes. We had many individual stations with drawers underneath with all the equipment and then on top there was about 5 feet of counter space per station and 2 induction burners. Most of us had a station all to ourselves. I ended up just sharing a space with a friend of mine and we split the duties. Once the white chocolate was melted we added some limoncello, which for those that don't know is a lemon liqueor that is popular here. Even at the restaurant, Carlo makes his own every year. It is very easy to make, but takes practice to get it just right. So the white chocolate-limoncello would be our filling for our chocolates. The school already had a pot of melted chocolate all ready for us on one of the burners, but first we would have to lower the temperature to around 90 degrees, or 32 degrees celcius. This is to temper the chocolate so it works better for chocolates. Once it was at the right temperature, we poured it into plastic molds with rose shapes. When they were filled we turned it over and let the chocolate pour out of the molds. This is a cool trick I have seen before, because not all of the chocolate drips out, leaving you a perfect shell shaped to the molds inside. The molds went into the fridge while we worked quickly on another chocolate which was just simply mixing some of the tempered chocolate with some cereal to make decorative chocolates for garnishes. Soon after that, our molds were ready so we piped the white chocolate filling into them and then covered the molds in the chocolate again and smoothed the top off to give ourselves the bottoms to our shells. They went off to the fridge briefly again and then we got them out and just tapped them out of the molds for rose shaped chocolates. We all got display bags to put them in to take home. I still haven't even tried them, I'll save them for later. For completing the course we all got certificates that of course none of us can read, but they are nice. We got to walk through the factory after that on a catwalk that went through the top of the factory in a circle so we could see some of what was going on. There were ton's of Willy Wonka references, that's for sure. We made a stop at the giftshop afterwards and then it was back on the bus for our next destination, lunch. We ate at a small restaurant that I am not sure how the Chef ever found. It was all great though. Everything was handmade including 30 portions of spaghetti for our group. They also made some fried rissotto croquettes with a bit of lemon zest in them that were awesome. The main course though was some grilled pork chops and ribs. Anything off the grill to our group was very welcome because its something we have all been missing. It was a great lunch. We left there and made a short trip to a local winery next which is one of the largest producers in Italy and they export to the US a lot. We met a guy from New York that was there on business for a wine company. We have been to so many wineries though its the same thing, just on a grander scale. However the coolest thing was a room they have in a deep large cellar where they have almost no lights on to protect the wine. They have a special environmentally controlled room that we weren't even able to go into. There they housed over the many years some of their most perfect vintages. If they find they have a good year, they will reserve 1000 bottles or so and put them there for future tastings. Then if they have special events they can have wine tastings and comparisons, perhaps just to compare a 2009 to a 1975. They had bottles going back as far as 1962, but there weren't many of those left. Next stop was a wine tasting to sample some of the wines produced at that vineyard. I couldn't really enjoy it though because of my cold though, my throat was hurting so bad today I couldn't even swallow water without a ton of pain. After the tasting we went to a wine and olive oil museum which was very interesting. The museum used to be a private collection of a wealthy family, but they opened it up the public and it is quite extensive. It had everything from tools to cultivate the grapes, harvest, crush, produce wine and grappa, even tons of artwork, pitchers and some very cool wine glasses. We finished up there just in time for our dinner reservation. Tonight we were dining at a very expensive 5 star restaurant. We all felt awkward walking in there because none of us were dressed for it, but Chef Polegri didn't seem worried about it. The restaurant was in a fancy spa and hotel, one of the very few spas for hundreds of miles from what we were told. They have an odd chocolate package where you can have a hot tub full of melted chocolate to relax in or chocolate showers....like I said, weird. Dinner was great, the service was excellent. We had 3 waiters serving us and you could tell that their training was extensive. They served us 4 courses. The first was prosciutto with a bread salad, second was a rissotto prepared with red wine and cheese which was excellent, the main course was a roasted guinea hen with stuffed tomatoes and eggplant, the guinea hen was ridiculously tender and delicious. For dessert was a semifredo with a presentation that was extremely well thought out and beautiful, ill post pictures soon. The only problem of the night is that some us were embarrassed by some of our groups behavior. There was maybe a little too much wine had during the tasting and at lunch, so their talking got a little loud and inappropriate for a 5 star restaurant. I can only hope that the waiters didn't understand them. We left there around 9:30 pm and got on the bus to head back home. There was even more wine drinking on the bus which got loud and sucked cause I was feeling terrible and just wanted to sleep. The group made it home though. I went straight home, took some strong medicine and went to sleep, it was a very long day.

Day 16

This morning I had our second Latin Cuisine class. We are still doing Mexican food which is interesting, but the menu isn't the greatest. I am feeling terrible today. Chef Polegri sent someone to find cold medicine for me yesterday because trying to find it myself would have been interesting. I don't think its as strong as the stuff we use though because it doesn't seem to be helping much. So of course I am just not in the mood to be there today. I am the good student though, I got all my homework done, even though it seems I might have been one of the only ones. I would take it easy on myself though, I took a few salsa recipes and a recipe for pickled red onions. All stuff that I could get done and not put too much strain on myself. I made a roasted tomato, onion, pepper, and garlic salsa, which basically had all the ingredients charred and then put through the meat grinder. It was good. I also did a pico de gallo and the red onions are just what they sound like. Everything was good, I do enjoy doing that kind of work, carefully layering the flavors of citrus, heat, salt and sugar. The rest of the menu was a garlic soup, refried beans, rice again, tortillas again, churros, and a steamed turkey dish that seemed the most interesting item on the menu. Unfortunately the turkey wasn't there yet and we weren't expecting it till at least 1o....the guy didn't show up till 11 and we were serving at 12:30. So of course we couldn't exactly cook it whole. It was also supposed to marinade for about an hour. We ended up cutting it up and marinading it quickly and then steaming it on the stovetop. We got it done, but it wasn't what it was meant to be. Everything was good at lunch, but we still had way too much food. Luckily the restaurant crew told us to save it all and they would have it for dinner tonight. As soon as I could, I got out of there, I was supposed to be back at the restaurant in about 1.5 hours and all I wanted to do was take a nap. I got to sleep for about an hour and then went back, but much to my surprise, it was all locked up. Of course when the restaurant isn't open and the students aren't there, its locked. So I would just have to wait and try again later. We had a scheduled wine seminar tonight so I went back at 6 pm. The wines are all excellent. Our teacher is a sommelier, so of course she is very knowledgeable. She handpicked all the wines we are tasting dependent on the region we are studying. All the wines are pretty expensive as well. That is a class we all enjoy and it is full of a lot of information. We were there for over 2 hours tonight and we only had 4 wines to taste and we are talking 8 bottles between 20 of us, so its not like we are getting hammered.....some of us were. After that we had a small group dinner. Some of the group seems to get frustrated with the food we have here. I have no idea why because it is all great and its free. I ate dinner with the group, which was great, and then I headed for some much needed sleep. Tomorrow is another group trip out of town. We are going to a chocolate seminar and will be making our own candies. The bus leaves at 7 am.

Day 15

Today April 13th, I have World Cuisine in the morning. So it was an early rise for me once again. I still felt terrible getting up, but at least I got some decent sleep because today was going to be a long day. This morning we are doing Middle Eastern Cuisine. It's not the most exciting cuisine if you look at it on paper. We started out with our breakfast and then we got a class lecture on Middle Eastern traditions, culture, and of course the food. Chef Polegri says that the cuisine is really boring though. They just aren't happy in the Middle East so we should just drop some gelato for them from a plane. Chef is getting famous for his unusual gelato concoctions. He made saffron and vanilla, English tea with honey, chocolate and cinnamon, even going as far as making a fish gelato which apparently was still pretty good. Today he would just make one inspired by baklava. I took a lamb dish to make with my partner for the day. It was a very simple dish to make because really it just required you to throw it all together and then braise the lamb for a long time. The time consuming part was that I had to break down the lamb from a shoulder with the bone in. It takes skill and practice to debone something like that easily. After we had our lamb braising, we each set off to help the rest of the class wherever we could. I helped roll out some whole wheat flatbreads. What was interesting though was how Chef took some of the recipes and made them a little more exciting. We were supposed to do an omelet with some shredded salted fish which sounded disgusting. Chef turned it around though and we used regular cod fillets, breaded and fried them and then made a thin omelet and wrapped them around the fish. I also made some green beans to go with the lamb which we were originally supposed to use okra, but we just can't get it here, what a tragedy. It was all great once again. The lamb was beautiful, with a ton of flavor. The green beans I had just cooked off and lined a serving dish with them and put the lamb and all the sauce on top. The beans worked great picking up the sauce and the lamb was perfectly tender. It was a great meal we prepared for everyone even though we were missing half of our group somewhere. After lunch and clean up, I just stayed and started working again. I mostly just did dishes right as they came in. The restaurant was closed, so the only thing we had to take care of was any messes the afternoon World Cuisine class made. It was kind of boring work wise, but it was fun just hanging out talking to everyone. We have a great group with a lot of characters. I ended up working till 6, we had an Italian language class, which I still think is very unhelpful a lot of the time. After that we ate dinner as a group and then it was off home. Tonight I had to write a paper for Latin class and my journal for my morning class. I ended being up till after midnight so I wasn't too happy about that, but tomorrow is another day.

Day 14

Today we have day 3 of European. Originally we were supposed to do Norther Italy cuisine for class, but the Chef found a great piece of tuna loin to use so he moved Southern Italy up to today. I won't be in class till afternoon though, so I am starting out my day working internship hours. I was supposed to make breakfast, but we didn't even have any eggs, but then someone showed up with pastries so I was spared the responsibility. I spent most of the morning just helping out the morning class get their ingredients and wash dishes. Lunch was great with stuffed pork loin, handmade orechietti pasta, a squid, shrimp and fish salad, foccacia, and tuna palermo style. After lunch it was my classes turn. We were going to do Southern Italy as well, but the Chef thankfully has tons of other recipes to try. He put together another completely different menu for us to use. This menu was selected by picking a few of the best known dishes from each region of the South. I think it's a better starting menu than our book provided. I chose to do some Sicilian Arancini, which are stuffed rice balls. Basically I would make some sticky rice, then make my own meat sauce and reduce that down till it was near dry and then mix it with cheese, peas and some other seasonings and then make balls with the meat sauce filling in the center and rice on the outside and then bread and fry them. Everything went great. The Chef gave me great compliments on the outcome which is high praise. In fact everyone did an excellent job tonight. Carlo, the Italian sous chef who has been cooking with Chef for a very long time commented that he never believed that Americans could cook Italian food that well. It was a great boost for us all, especially since we have just a small class of 6 to get everything done. After clean up I went home and took the night for myself. Since I am sick all I wanted to do was relax and sleep, just hoping to get over this cold quickly.

Day 13

Sunday...I would love to sleep in, but I haven't done that since I got here so I am used to it. Our schedule has to be flexible because we have events that are appointment based. The original plan was to do the Parma/Tuscany trip on Saturday and Sunday but we had to move it up to Thurs/Fri. I was supposed to have my first Latin cuisine class on Thursday..then that got moved to Saturday, but they decided to have an Italian Cuisine class, so now I had to get up on Sunday for Latin class. Today was also the first day with Chef Cochran as a teacher. So far he's just been our go to guy for all the drama the boys have, I feel bad for him cause he is a really cool guy. He at least let us sleep till 7, class starts at 8 am. Of course this still isn't like normal school. I don't get free cappucinno when I go to class at Indy and somehow that makes you feel better first thing in the morning. This felt a lot more like AI than the rest of our lessons though. First class so we went over the syllabus, talked about our expectations as far as homework, preparation, and format for our papers and journals, all just like a normal class would be. Then we got to a regular old lecture on Mexico and the cuisine. After that we divided up the recipes and it was off to work. I got handed the chicken soup, which was just fine by me, I like making a good soup. I could use one now because I did finally come down with a full blown cold and my throat is killing me. Soup isn't difficult, especially this one, because even since we multiplied it by 4 to make enough for the entire group, the total cooking time I was looking at was about 30 minutes. The prep sucked a lot though. I needed chicken so they handed me two whole chickens and 10 chicken thighs, which all had to be deboned and small diced. I can work pretty quickly and I got it all done, but by I don't know about anyone else in this field, but if I have to do that repetitively I get sick of looking at it. Its a good thing the soup was good, because at that point I hated chicken. The whole meal turned out great. We have a group that is focused on what they need to do and there is a lot of skill here. I am proud to be part of this group. What was especially good was the pork with green mole sauce...anyone from AI that has taken this class probably knows what I am talking about. With the fresh tortillas our group made and the spicy salsa that was whipped up, it was excellent. For once there weren't any leftovers on at least one dish. We fed our group, but we ate family style with our class members sitting at the same table so the Chef could talk to us and we could all critique while we ate. There were few complaints, if you could call them complaints. Chef Cochran was also great in the kitchen too with helpful suggestions, different techniques and any changes that might be needed for a dish. After lunch and clean up I went home. I wanted to work some more internship hours, but they had enough help for the day, so I had to settle for going home and taking a nap. It was a short rest for me though because I wanted to get a start on all my papers for the week. I have to write 2 pages for every class with Chef Polegri and 2 pages for Chef Cochran, that's 8 pages of reports to write, all on different subjects. So anyone that doesn't think we aren't working, we are. We just have frequent coffee breaks and wine tastings. The rest of my night was spent talking to the guys and working on my papers, I got 3 out of 5 done, so I think it was a productive day. Tomorrow we are back in class with Chef Polegri for European cuisine. I am working in the morning and have class in the afternoon, so I know that I will be spending the whole day at the restaurant, which isn't bad at all.

Day 12

This morning I had Italian cooking part 3. I woke up feeling better, but I think I am getting a cold which sucks. We got to the restaurant at 8 and as soon as we arrived we were off to the Saturday farmer's market to pick up what we needed for the day. That is an awesome thing to do. Just a 10 minute walk away you can pick up the freshest ingredients you can imagine. Today's menu includes ravioli, pesto, chicken with peppers, stuffed zucchini blossoms, chickpea bread, and risotto. I took the ravioli for myself because I want to make as much fresh pasta as I can while I am here. Our filling today is fresh brocollini that we picked up at market along with basil, ricotta cheese, and hot pepper oil. I started out making the pasta dough, by hand of course. Its time consuming, especially if you are doing enough to feed 20 people, but it's amazing to watch the Chef or some of his workers do it, because it becomes so fast and perfect with practice. After I had the filling done and the pasta had rested we started to roll it out. Out of one mass of dough we would split it into 4 parts and 3 of us would work on rolling it out and making the raviolis to save some time. Getting the pasta to just the right thickness takes patience and practice. You want it thin enough to see through it. By the time you are done, hopefully, you have a large flat piece that is near enough square or at least round. One half you use a melon baller to portion out your filling, the other half you brush with egg wash and then fold it over the filling carefully, making sure to not tear the delicate pasta and make sure you get as much air out of the pockets of filling as you can. We had more success than failure with it so we were happy. Our goal was to just make enough where everyone could have 4 raviolis, a perfect portion, we had more than enough for that. The initial plan was to serve it with the fresh pesto, but after we made them we decided the pesto would be too much and cover the flavor of our filling so we would instead boil the ravioli and then finish them in a saute pan with sage butter and parmesan. It took me about 3 hours with plenty of help to make those raviolis. We all had lunch ready on time, 1 pm. We plated up a family style lunch for all of us. It was all great. The risotto ended up with tons of black truffles and cheese, it was very well seasoned. The chicken was so good, especially since it is almost rare to see chicken served around here, the sauce though was too good to leave on the plate, you had to take the Chef's advice and clean it off with a piece of bread. After lunch we cleaned up and had our first lesson with a sommelier. My initial plan was to not drink of it and just spit it out, then they told me that it was all at least 80 euros a bottle so I should drink it or else its just going down a drain. Don't get me wrong, they were all really good wines. I made sure to take pictures of all the labels so I could find them in the future. Some of our group ended up a bit tipsy, but you could tell everyone really enjoyed this kind of class for some reason. Afterwards, I went home for a quick nap and then some homework before dinner. Dinner tonight included cannolis for dessert, a barley soup with sausages, whole roasted trout, and some Italian creamed potatoes. The potatoes were excellent, although they weren't really a recipe from the Chef, it was just one of our group members creations. The trout was also perfect, especially topped with a bit of the pesto we made this morning that hadn't been used. Another great dinner and then it was back home for some more homework. I am trying to get ahead for the next week and tomorrow I have my first Latin cuisine class.

Day 11

Another early morning for us. It was very hard to get out of bed this morning, but at least it was nice to have a shower where you could actually stretch out your arms in. We all gathered in the lobby at 6:30, ate breakfast at the hotel buffet and then hopped on the bus. Most of us tried to sleep as we headed back south into Tuscany. I just watched the scenery outside. They say Tuscany is beautiful....that's no exaggeration. Chef said this is the best time of the year to be here, in the summer it gets hot and all the fresh green grass and flowers turn into hills of dry grass. Any pictures I take just can't do it justice. We drove through hills and up mountains, we stopped by a local farmer herding his sheep. Everywhere you turn you saw beautiful old houses sitting on the perfect hills. A "bad view" from your window probably doesn't have an equivalent in Italian because I don't think it could possible exist here. Our destination was a winery where they produce brunello and chianti called Donatella Cinelli Colombini. It is owned by a woman that grew up in a family of wine producers and helped her father with it all of her life. When she inherited it she decided to change a lot of the goals of the company. For one all the wine production is done by women. They have 5 women who create the wine from start to finish because there isn't a lot of agreement that women can handle it here. It is seen as a men's profession. They have men help with the picking of the grapes, but everything else is handled by the women. Donatella has become a spokeswoman for Tuscany wines in general because she organized with vineyards all over a event on the last weekend in May every year for wineries to open their doors to the public for tours and tastings, because a lot of wine makers used to believe that they shouldn't share their secrets or where the produce their wine. They are most famous for their Brunello because it has been recognized by American and European wine reviewers with high marks. We got a tour of their facility and its pretty spectacular, but most interesting was the history our guide gave us about Montalcino, the city where the wine is produced. All throughout history the city was valued by Siena and Florence for its strategic position and their wealth in the tanning trade. There came a point where the two cities went to battle over the city and left the people of Monalcino to decide their loyalties. Not knowing who would be the victor, or whose side to pick, the Montalcino general led his army to the appointed battlefield with deliberate slowness. They would take so much time just getting there that by the time time they arrived the battle would be over and the victor would be decided and they could say they were sorry they couldn't of helped the victor to win because of course they wanted to join them the entire time. Siena won the battle, but they were upset that the Montalcino soldiers hadn't been there to prove their loyalty so they made them bury all the dead, on both sides. To this day if someone wants to insult someone from Montalcino they call them the Italian word for gravediggers or undertakers. The tour included several paintings of some of these scenes from Montalcino history, including a painting of the Montalcino soldiers burying the dead. After the tour we had a tasting of the Brunello right there in the wine cellar. We left shortly after because the owner Donatella, had arranged a special lunch for us at her restaurant. The bus headed up into the moutains, but after 30 minutes we came to a closed road that had a rockslide that was being cleaned up, so we had to turn around and find an alternate route up, which took about 1.5 hours. The restaurant was part of a bed and breakfast on top of a mountain overlooking valleys in either direction. We had passed by another town on an opposite hill that you could clearly see was a wealthy neighborhood. If you have a large house and a pool in Tuscany, you must have some money. The bed and breakfast was pretty large, you could rent a place for 130 euros for the first night and additional 30 euros a night after that. They had a park, tennis courts, and many other amenities. Not a bad place to spend some time at all. The dinner they prepared for us was excellent. We had 6 courses over 2 hours with a tasting of 4 wines throughout the meal. They really take care of their guests here, but we have way too much food. After dinner we walked around the area a bit and a lot of us bought some of the Donatella wine. I bought some Brunello, I am not crazy about it, I am sure I'll save it for a special occasion. Our guide told us that in restaurants they are selling the same bottles for 120 euros each and we bought ours for 25 euros each. We got onto the bus once again and headed to another small Tuscan town, Piensa. The town looked like it was out of a 50's sitcom, not because of the style of houses, but more because of the small town atmosphere. The little shops had an awesome variety of interesting art, tools, and food. We only spent about an hour here, Chef had just stopped to get some cheese from a producer here to use in the restaurant. We all got to watch the sun set over Tuscany as we drove away. We were back in Orvieto about an hour later, which we were all happy to see. It's amazing how comfortable we all became here so quickly. We were all exhausted though, so for most of us it was time to call it a night. I have an 8 am Italian cooking lesson in the morning and I am badly in need of some rest.

Day 10

3:30 in the morning came way too soon. I did manage to get to sleep by 10 pm, so I got a lot more sleep then a lot of people did. I got to the restaurant first, around 4:15, everyone was supposed to be there by 4:30 because we were going to be shuttled in the Chef's van to the bottom of Orvieto to get on the bus. Another group member, Sheldon and I, started to make cappucinnos right away because we wanted them and we were sure everyone else would too. Of course as things usually go the majority of the group over slept, forgot stuff, or were just slow to get ready. We did all make it on the bus before 5 though which was our intended time to leave. Our first stop would be Parma, Italy which is North of Florence, in between Milan and Bologna. The trip took us about 4 hours all together. The first stop was a small farm where they produce Parmigianno Reggiano. This cheese is protected by a European consortium, at least the name is. It can only carry the name if it was produced in this region completely. All the milk that goes into the cheese comes from within 10 kilometers of the producer. Its all organic milk and they are strict on the diet and handling of the milk. It is given to the cheese producers and I was surprised to find how quickly it is really made. They use 159 gallons of milk to make just 2 wheels of cheese. They explained to us how they are placed into large silver basins and left overnight for the cream to rise to the top. The cream is skimmed off and sent to be made into butter. Then the rest of the milk is mixed with another fresh batch of whole milk and put into large vats that are about 6 feet deep. They are conical and they add whey and rennet to the milk as they are heated by a steam system. The containers are copper on the inside and steel on the outside. They started the process early in the morning before we got there, and when we got there the cheese was all ready to come out. Two guys broke the cheese into 2 pieces with a specialized tool and then wedged it out from the bottom with a giant wooden spatula. Then they got a large cloth and got it wrapped around the cheese and pulled out of the milk mixture and let it drain for a bit as it was tied to poles. The cheese master pulled off some chunks for us to eat, it tasted like unflavored mozzarella, it had the texture, but no salt, just bland. After the cheese is pulled out its taken to the salting room. Its a large room with huge vats of brine. The cheese is first pressed into molds to squeeze out a lot of moisture, its pressed over and over into smaller molds, and then finally into a special mold with a plastic strip which will end up leaving the company name and the brand name on the rind of the cheese as it ages. After we saw the salting room we went into the storage room. This is a small producer and the room we walked into was massive. All the cheese is aged for at least 12 months and up to 30 months. There were 5 rows of shelves, each with wheels stacked 17 high and we counted 70 wheels deep. We calculated that there was about 3.5 million dollars in cheese in there. After that room we began plotting the heist.....but first we had a tasting to get out of the way. We had a selection of the 12 month, 24 month and 30 month old cheeses. All of them were very good, but each with a distinctive flavor. I ended up buying a half kilo of the 30 month old, which is about 1 pound. It cost me 7 euros, which is about 11-12 bucks, which is a great price per pound for this quality of cheese. After we left we traveled not too far to a prociutto di Parma producer. Chef Polegri once told me that the prociutto we have in the states is "shit." He was definitely right. There is no comparison. We got told about the whole process from start to finish and saw some hams already undergoing each stage. They go through a lot of care and some time honored techniques with a lot of quality control to get just the right product. Once again this is a product that is regionally protected. No one else can use the Parma name and when you try it you know why they are protective of it. All over Parma they were selling it in restaurants and delis, slicing it so thin you could see right through it. After the factory we went to a vineyard so Chef Polegri could buy some wine for the restaurant and he bought us some meats and cheeses for snacking. After that it was off to pick up lunch. He knew a nice bakery and pizzaria not far away that we could get a great variety of stuff. We basically cleaned the place out. We had a bus full of hungry people so we got 3 different kinds of pizza, several types of sandwiches, a bunch of baguettes to go with our meats, cheeses, and some great balsamic vinegar and fruit preserves. We got the stuff to go and got back on the bus and took it to our next location, a vineyard and producer of balsamic vinegar. We had our lunch quickly, we were all starving, and the vineyard gave us a selection of wine to sample with our lunch. After we had devoured nearly all the food, we got a tour of the balsamic vinegar production. It really doesn't take any more than patience to create it. We are talking about years and years of patience though. They make it without any machine or chemical help, they just let the process take place naturally, with the natural grapes over long periods of time. They showed us how the vinegar starts out in large bottles and loses about 10% of its mass in one year through evaporation. Once a year they put a batch that has been reduced into a smaller barrel and repeat that over and over for as long as 30 years. There is a whole consortium of producers that participate in this and they are also protected by the European Union, so several producers cooperate to be able to make enough to sell to the public. Their real prize that they sell to the public is their 12, 20, and 30 year old balsamic vinegar that comes in their red, silver and gold packages. No matter where they were made in this limited region, they all have a common packaging to certify its authenticity. We had a tasting of all 3 and they are all excellent. The red is sweet, with a little tang and its still pretty liquid. By the time you get to the gold its like maple syrup with a rich taste, just a few drops would go a long way. They sell it in packages of all 3, or you can buy them individually. I bought the 30 year old because its excellent and a single bottle will last for a long time because you only use it in the rarest of occasions as a finisher to a dish, you never cook with it. Chef Cochran who is with us bought a bottle 10 years ago and says he still has 1/3 of a bottle left. Its expensive, but overtime I think its worth it, and who knows, I may never get back here and if i tried to get it in the states it would be twice the cost, and not as good. After the vineyard we headed to the hotel, we would be staying overnight in Parma and leaving early Friday morning to go to Tuscany. The hotel we got was very nice. Still small, but better than our apartment in Orvieto in some ways. A lot of the group went to sleep when we got there, it had already been a long day, but a lot of Parma. They city is beautiful of course. The buildings and town in all aren't as old as Orvieto, but it's a lot more modern. There is a college in town, we even met a few people from Spain that were there for school. I could see it being pretty comfortable to live there, there are more amenities that home has than Orvieto can offer. We went out for group dinner at night to a great restaurant. They went all out for a menu for us. There was a parmigianno custard topped with shallots caramelized in balsamic vinegar, prosciutto with these fresh ravioli shaped pastries that were still very hot when they got to us, then we had a few great pasta dishes and a veal dish with potatoes. We really eat way too much here. After dinner a few people went out, but I was off to bed, we have another early wake up call to get back on the bus, and I haven't slept all day.

Day 9

Today the only thing I have on the schedule is class at 7 am. With almost all of us doing internship hours, its hard to get in everyone to places without it being overcrowded. The maximum that can work at the restaurant is 7 people at a time, morning and night shift. None of us are worried about getting hours though. There are tons of opportunities to get hours all over the place and I believe by the time this week is over I'll have at least 30 hours. We all have to work 130 over 9 weeks, of course we all want to just get it done as fast as possible so we either have the option of working more, or taking the free time to go on day trips, or long weekends. Today's class is Spain again. Today we are doing paella, garlic soup, monkfish with romesco sauce, Asturian bean stew with clams, spinach, catalan syle and pears with a caramel coffee sauce. I kind of got stuck with the dessert as people grabbed up recipes, there were only 6 recipes for 10 people today. Desserts are ok to do, but they require a lot of time and thought in plating and decoration. The recipe is simple enough, just pears, that have been cored and halved, and then baked, flat side down with sugar on top until they are caramelized and tender. Then you serve those with a coffee-caramel sauce and whipped cream. We wanted to do something different of course. We had some extra sweet dough from the strawberry shortcakes the other day. So we rolled that out and put them in tart pans to blind bake them off. The pears we followed the recipe and baked them. For the sauce our idea was to make a coffee flavored pastry cream. We used a standard pastry cream recipe and instead of adding vanilla, we added 6 shots of espresso, it was awesome. So we had our baked sweet tart dough, we piped the espresso whipped cream on top, fanned the pears out over the tart, and then piped more espresso cream on top with some vanilla whipped cream on top. I was real happy with how it looked considering how much I don't like doing pastries. Lunch went well then. We sat outside on the Zeppelin deck and the paella was excellent. The morning class cleaned everything up and then I went home. Since I had the afternoon off, I would take the opportunity to catch up on some homework and perhaps get a little ahead. I didn't have to go back to the restaurant until 6. When I got there we had a group Italian language class. I really don't think I am going to learn a lot, but you'd be surprised how easy it is to get around not knowing the language. We had a group dinner tonight which was good, but we were all ready to get home because tomorrow we have to be up at 3:30 am to meet and get on a bus for our first group trip to Parma and Tuscany.

Day 8

Tuesday, April 6th I have another day of classes, classical European today. First I was supposed to go work at a butcher shop this morning for internship hours. We went there just after 7:30 which is when they opened. That's kind of difficult, because you have to walk in and tell them you are there to work, when they obviously don't speak English. I just told them I was sent to work by Chef Lorenzo and I managed to figure out that he was saying that he didn't need us till next week. So, Randy and I who were supposed to be working together there, went back to the restaurant and told Chef we couldn't work there, so he just had us start working there because bread needed to be made. Bread here is made fresh every day. The basic recipe is so simple, and its always made by hand. We usually make massive amounts at one time. Today we made about 5 kilos of dough, which is about 11 pounds, but of course as it rises, it becomes huge. We take that dough and break it down and make many things out of it. The chef loves you to be creative so anything you want to try, go for it. First we made 4 loaves of basil bread, with fresh chopped basil incorporated into the dough and its topped with basil oil right before its baked. I made some rolls with a cured pork cheek, diced and incorporated into the dough with parmesan, finished with an egg wash and parmesan on top. We made the 4 loves, 3 pans of rolls and still had a lot of dough left over, so we made one large pan pizza with an olive dough, topped with tomato sauce, cheese, and some leftover shrimp we had to use up. Then I took the rest of the dough and made mini pizzas with spicy tomato sauce and 3 cheeses. That was one hell of a breakfast for the class. I spent the rest of the morning helping out the class that was in there, helping Chef Polegri, or doing dishes. When lunch came around we all ate fennel and red onion salad, shrimp souffle (which was awesome with a mustard sauce and glazed shallots on top), Roast Beef with Yorkshire pudding (the first red meat I've had since we left, and it was perfectly cooked), and for desert we had strawberry shortcakes. As soon as dessert was done, it was off for my turn with British Isle cuisine. Our menu was Scotch Broth, which is a soup made with mutton, we didn't have mutton, the chef wanted to use lamb, but all he had were these beautiful lamb chops they use for the restaurant, so sure enough i had to cut the usable meat off of those, but I took a few whole ones to get some of the flavor from the bones in the stew. The stew had leeks, carrots, onions, potatoes, celery, garlic, barley and fresh rosemary. It came out very good and I had a lot of compliments because it was a homemade like soup that a lot of people had been craving. I also helped Chef make a Guinness stew which was just a mirepoix, carmelized with some cubed pork shoulder and then we added about 6 bottles of Guiness and just let it boil down along with just some salt, pepper, and a couple tablespoons of cocoa powder. The final dish was rich and had a bit of bite to it at the end. We also made fish and chips, which the chips (french fries), were well done with a bit of tabasco on them for heat. The fish had a Guiness beer batter and that was also very good. We also made a roast pork stuffed with apples, sundried tomatoes, and fennel, colcannon (which is a classic Irish dish of mashed potatoes mixed with cabbage), for dessert was a dundee cake. We all did well, but because of the late start, dinner was late, and we still had to clean up the kitchen afterwards so we didn't get to leave till after 9. So again I had to come home and quickly get another paper done for class in the morning, although it was much easier to write than my last, because I just wrote about Spanish tapas. Tomorrow is day 2 of World cuisine, we are doing Spain again, so I will be up early.

Day 7

Today is the first day of classes. I have World Cuisine at 7 am and then I am working my internship at 3:30. One thing I do love about doing school here is that it is very laid back. Some of my friends back at school might be jealous. We don't wear hats. A lot of time there are some of us interning so they can do our dishes for us. As far as the recipes go we are extremely flexible. We can't get everything you need here, so we have to improvise. We started out class with cappucinno's of course, and then we went through a powerpoint about Spain and its history. There was absolutely no rush to it. We got there at 7 and didn't even begin cooking until 9. One thing my friends wont be jealous of is the work. Chef Polegri wants us to have a small paper prepared each day before class. We have Spain cuisine on Wednesday so we have to have a 2 page paper on something about Spain, it could be anything. Also, I have classical European cuisine tomorrow and I haven't had a single class yet, but already I have to write a paper on the British isles for tomorrow. That's how the rest of the quarter is going to go. We will have 3 days of Italy and 3 days of French so that means we need 2 pages for each day. We of course also have journals for each class that are still due the next class, so today's world cuisine journal, is due Wednesday. However, no recipe cards as of yet. They photocopy the recipes for us. Cooking here is a lot of fun. The kitchen is very well stocked, all we ever need to take out of our kits are our knives. We also have small classes so instead of separating into groups, we work as one large team. So today, with Spanish tapas, we are multiplying each recipe by at least 4. We will be cooking for ourselves and all our classmates and instructors. We will basically cater ourselves for lunch today and we are charged with making a high end tapas display. I started out working with someone to prep a calamari dish, but the calamari was still a little frozen, so I helped another teammate start the Spanish omelet. This dish is something we do regularly at the Spanish tapas restaurant I work at. Simply its a frittata with potatoes, eggs, and onions. You can put into it anything you want though. At the restaurant there is tomatoes, spinach, garlic, red pepper flakes, but we make them small, in 4 inch pans. The smallest we had was 6 inches, which just means increased cooking time. We started out slicing onions and potatoes thinly, and then prepping everything we wanted to put in the omelet like red and green peppers, tomatoes, cheese, and parsley. We quickly browned the onions, potatoes, and peppers, at the restaurant we usually deep fry the potatoes briefly to partially cook them. When that was done we started out with our pan with some oil, added the potatoes, onions, peppers and cheese and then the eggs, mixed it all up and let it sit. You need to just let a crust form on the bottom, shaking the pan once in a while to get the egg to move a little bit so it doesn't cook unevenly. A short time later you throw the pan into the hot oven and let it bake until the eggs completely set. The first one was a trial, and it did turn out ok, but it's not what I wanted, the pan should be completely full to get the right final product. We used almost all of the potatoes we prepped on just the first one. It looked alright, but I knew what I wanted to have for the second one. This time I mixed everything in a bowl the potatoes, fresh tomatoes, onions, peppers, cheese, parsley, until it had the right ratio of eggs to everything else. Got the pan real hot, and then poured it all in at once. It was the perfect amount, the pan just barely held it all. So we let it sit there and get that crust on the bottom, threw it in the oven and about 20 minutes later, we flipped out a perfect omelet. Everyone liked both of them a lot. The food from everyone was very good, there was a lot of interpretation and display techniques used in different ways. We had sweet and savory empanadas, garlic shrimp on toast, battered deep fried olives, calamari, croquettes, and many other dishes. The display looked great. We all had a huge lunch and there was tons left over. We got the kitchen cleaned up, because we were already way over our time for class, it was 2 pm by the time we finished and the afternoon class was supposed to start at 1. I briefly went home and figured since I was supposed to be at the restaurant in an hour and a half anyways, I would just go back and start working. Today I just jumped in where ever I was needed. I helped get a mystery basket together for the afternoon class, because they would also be doing tapas, but they would get a limited amount of ingredients and have to make something from it. I helped prep a few things for dinner service, but mostly I washed dishes. The afternoon class didn't even start class then until about 4, so the dinner they would be making would be late, and we were supposed to have Italian language class at 6. That quickly got cancelled for the night. At 6:30 I went home, got changed for dinner and came right back. The afternoon group did a great job with the tapas as well, they didn't make a buffet like we had, because we were set up to eat in a different room. It was another great dinner. Afterwards we all went home and most of us had our papers to write. I wrote mine on the cuisine of the British isles, the influences behind it, the ingredients, and some of the favorite dishes. As soon as I was done, it was off to bed, because I was expected at the butcher shop early the next day.

Day 6

Today I started my first day of internship at the restaurant. I was there on time..10 am, despite the fact that I only slept about 4 hours. Of course we just have the first day stuff, getting acclimated to where everything is in the restaurant. Luckily working in the kitchen for classes at least got me a general overview of where things are kept. They had me start by helping with some prep for lunch and dinner service. I cut up about 30 red onions and then we braised them in red wine and balsamic vinegar. The finished product, especially making so much at one time, takes a long time, but the result is something I would eat with anything. Then I helped prep some spinach that had been boiled and then we bake it with garlic, salt, red pepper flakes and olive oil. After that we made a family dinner for the cooks and the front of the house staff. Lunch service started shortly afterwards and it was a pretty busy day because of Easter. I mostly worked the dish station, while getting some good inside info from my trainer IP. He is an intern that was part of the last Arts Institute group that stayed in Orvieto with chef last fall. The Chef liked him so he invited him out to work for a while and hes been here since early March. So IP has a lot of knowledge of the program itself, where we are staying, and about the restaurant itself. He gave me the menu in Italian and English, because if I do get the opportunity to work on the line, if we get a ticket in the servers of course write it in Italian. Of course the first step is just to learn the dishes themselves, so I watched as much plating of the food as possible. All the pasta is made fresh here, they have a pasta machine to cook it in as well that is essentially 2 small sinks that can be drained, refilled, and heated to boiling temp quickly, with multiple baskets inside each of them for easy removal and separation of portions. Wild boar is a popular dish and they had a lamb dish that was selling very well today. Of course I liked seeing the grilled sheep's cheese with a black truffle sauce that they then shave black truffles on top of. Still, mostly I just did dishes, its an easy job, but gives you time to watch whats going on, learn, and still help a lot. If we had a slow time I did have time to talk to a few of the other interns working in the pantry station. I got to see some of the desserts plated like a marscapone mousse with a cherry grappa sauce, the sauce was excellent. We kept pretty busy for the most part, they said it was an above average day for business, but we never got behind. It should be even more interesting in the next few weeks because so many of us are doing internships. Tomorrow alone we will have 7 students working during the lunch service and 7 others taking over to help for dinner. That is in addition to the regular full time crew. I left around 4 and came back to our place to relax, I ended up starting to get ready for classes to begin Monday morning by reviewing the recipes we would be covering the first day. Before long it was time for our group dinner. Since it is Easter the Chef decided to make the meal more special. We had 4 courses, the first was a polenta with the same black truffle sauce and shaved black truffles on top. It was very good. The second course was penne pasta with a fresh tomato sauce and italian parsley which I could have eaten all of but I knew there was more coming. The third course was a roasted lamb stuffed with herbs and sundried tomatoes. It was overcooked for my taste, the cooked it well done. However it was very well seasoned and still moist and there was a good brown sauce and sauteed zucchini that came with it. For dessert we had a traditional Easter cake with a chocolate sauce, which was a nice dessert since it was very light. After dinner we had a short talk about some of the expectations as far as class starting are. Such as don't be late, don't show up drunk, the usual stuff you have to worry about of course with our group. Class begins at 7 am tomorrow with World cuisine and we will start with Spanish tapas, something I have some familiarity with. Hopefully this will be the first night I make it through the whole night of sleep uninterrupted.

Day 5

Today we have part 2 of our tour in and around Orvieto. Chef Polegri always has a few anecdotes about the history of the region and traditions of the city. We started out at the farmer's market again by popular request, but it was also a shopping trip. Chef had a huge list of things he needed for the restaurant and for the classes we will be starting Monday. It's funny how much bartering still works here, he can often haggle with the purveyor for a better price, or at least a discount. The vendors are all generous though, handing out samples to all of us. Chef bought us a 7 year old parmesan that is aged beneath the ground which we would sample with our lunch today. We were allowed a lot of time to wander around while the Chef found everything he needed. We found an awesome rotisserie booth where they were roasting whole chickens, ribs, even whole ducks. We bought a grilled stuffed chicken and some fresh french fries. It was incredibly good and the fries were fresh, perfectly cooked, we all joked about how excited we all were by french fries, but a lot of people are missing certain comforts of home. Someone else bought a duck and we all tried it. The skin was perfectly crispy. After we finished our shopping we went to a chocolate demonstration for an Orvietan chocolate festival. We have been seeing all over town the massive easter eggs made from chocolate they have here. Easter displays are everywhere. A pastry chef demonstrated how they create the eggs by using tempered chocolate and putting it in a mold and a turning machine to evenly distribute the chocolate around the mold and letting it cool and solidify. After the demo Chef showed us how to get to the train station, which is a pretty good hike, but not bad. Nearby is also a small pastry shop that a friend of his owns, where a few of us will be doing pastry internships. Afterwards we headed back to the restaurant for lunch which were some fresh artichokes, battered and deep fried with a lemon aoili. Then we got a fried pastry with spinach and cheese. We all got a break after lunch and the Chef decided to cancel the rest of the tour that day because a lot of us were missing. A got in a nap since I didn't get to sleep much the night before and then went and picked up a few things at the grocery store. Dinner we finally went out for pizza. Chef took us to a pizzaria owned by a friend of his. They gave us a variety of 4 different pizzas that we all got big slices of. We had a cheese, mushroom pizza, sausage and corn, and pepperoni. They were all very good, the crust is thin and crispy and the cheese is very fresh. They also gave us an appetizer of prosciutto with toasted breads with 3 different toppings, one with liver, one with artichoke, and one with a red pepper sauce. After dinner we all went out for a bit too, but I left early to go with some of the older girls just just hang out somewhere quiet. They had bought some meats and cheeses from the market including some wild boar, pecorino, bread, and apples. I came home around 2 am and tried to sleep, but once again didn't get much chance.

Day 4

Today was the second day of our Italian cuisine courses. I am in the morning group so we started out at the restaurant at 7 am. Today's menu was gnocchi with a lamb ragu, eggplant parmigiana, chocolate and cinnamon gellato, a cornmeal pie with raisins and mushrooms, and a ricotta cheese and chocolate pie. I helped with the eggplant parmigiana. I started with a simple tomato sauce, fried eggplant slices, and Chef made a bechamel. We ended up plating it in individual ramekins, by lining the bottom of the ramekins with thinly sliced zucchini and layering the ingredients inside with pecorino and parmesan. It turned out very good. We also made fresh pizza today, some with tomato and red onion and another with tomato and mozzarella. The pizza was great. The gnocchi with the lamb ragu was definitely my favorite though. The gnocchi was a simple recipe with some fennel fronds for color. We made a massive amount of the dough so it took a very long time for 4 people to roll it all out. All of these recipes are definitely keepers. It was a very good lunch. Afterwards the morning group had a break until we needed to be back for dinner and tonight is our first Italian language class. During break some us wandered the city as usual, others just relaxed until dinner. Of course by the time 6 pm rolled around a lot of us were hungry but we had to have language class before dinner at 8. The class was interesting. We learned by doing for some of it because we had to fill out some personal information because we are getting certification from the Umbrian Government for language training. Then we started out with basic greetings and numbers. I believe we are getting at least 20 hours of instruction over the course of our stay here. Dinner was great once again, but too much. We waste a lot of great food because there are at least 3 courses and the serving size is large. Tonight there were 4 courses. The first was a spring bread salad, with veggies, spaghetti with a mushroom cream sauce, and beef bocconcini, with a ricotta and chesnut mousse with a red wine reduction for dessert. After dinner we went out together again and just relaxed but a lot of us took off for home early since we have another tour tomorrow at 8 am.

Day 3

Today we were up bright and early for the first part of our tour of Orvieto. We started out at the restaurant with cappuccinos as usual. Then we headed to the farmer's market. The market is incredible, its out in a large open square with tables of almost anything you can imagine. Predominately there are fresh produce, meat, cheese and other food product booths. The quality of the food is the most incredible part. When we had our first lesson in Italian cuisine we got to work with some of of the fresh herbs that grow wild around here. We also got to use some truly amazing tomatoes for a sauce. The farmer's market had a huge array of extremely good looking produce, that was all locally grown and organic. I've uploaded many pictures to facebook with some of the food. The strawberries were awesome, the zucchini with the blossoms on them were amazing to see, the artichokes were fresher than I have ever seen in the states. There were booths of dried fruits and nuts, the candied kiwis were awesome. The peppers are all huge, at least 4 times the size of what we see in the US. We were only allowed to spend a little of our time exploring because we have a lot to do, but the market is every Thursday and Saturday and it is supposed to be bigger on Saturday so we are all planning a return trip then. Before leaving the square though we stopped at a local pastry shop of course, then at a chocolate shop where we were given samples of grappa and then we were off to the Duomo. The cathedral is an amazing piece of architecture. The level of detail cannot be easily captured on camera in less than thousands of shots. It is a huge structure that has frescos, and sculptures telling biblical stories all over. The inside of the Duomo, you can't even take pictures of unless you do not use your flash because the paint is sensitive to light. After we were finished there we headed on a tour of the caverns below Orvieto itself. Once upon a time the valley where Orvieto now stands was covered by volcanic ash and rock from a nearby explosion. Over thousands of years, erosion caused the natural formation of an elevated rock which would become a perfect elevated position to build Orvieto as a fortress. The volcanic rock that sits beneath the city eventually became sought after because of the ease in which you can mix it with water to create a cement like mixture which was used to build the buildings in Orvieto. So there are huge tunnels created by mining, there is an even older cave that was used in the winter for a warm place to make olive oil, using huge mill stones. Also every building in Orvieto most likely has or at one time had its own cave. Some of the caves were used for storage, a lot have water shafts, and a lot we saw had pigeon holes for breeding. The caves with pigeons were attached as basements for houses so in tough times the residents could go down and kill one for dinner. That was also helpful if there was a siege on the town. The view from the cave was amazing looking over a cliff you could see a medieval looking castle which i took several pictures of. Another awesome thing was the huge amount of rosemary growing everywhere in this area. All of it had blossoms on it. While we went into the caves Chef Polegri stayed outside to pick some along with some wild dill. After we left there we went straight to the tour of Orvieto. There is an elevator that only goes to a second floor then there are tons and tons of steps to the top. It is a rough climb, even if you are in shape, but it is well worth it. The tower you can see all of Orvieto and the surrounding countryside for miles. The weather has been perfect here for touring. Its been mostly sunny, sunny all day today, the wind gets pretty rough sometimes, but I don't mind it at all. After the tower we headed back for lunch at the Zeppelin. We had a artichoke rissoto and a large fresh tomato, stuffed with fresh mozzarella and topped with balsamic vinegar. I took a great picture of that you should check out on facebook. We were allowed a break for an hour and a half, which most of us took the time to get a short nap. Then we met up again and headed for an old Etruscan well. It was designed to take donkeys all they down to the bottom and back up with water. However to make it easier the steps wind in different directions like a DNA strand along the sides of the well so that there is a down path and an up path so that people don't run into each other along the way. This was another rough climb. Going down is no problems, but the well is at least 100 feet down and there are 250 steps in either direction. After our walk up the tower earlier in the day, a lot of us had to take our time and stop briefly every once in a while to let our legs rest. At this point we had all decided that we were really ready to be done walking for the day. So we went to a wine shop for tasting of some classic Orvieto wines. There was the Orvieto Classico, a red wine, and a desert wine that they served with almond biscotti for dipping. The generosity is amazing here. Without motive they served us the wine for over 2o of us, gave us lots of bread, fresh parmesan, wild boar sausage, and an awesome red onion jam that I will have to bring some home with me. Afterwards they topped it off by letting us see their wine cellar. The bottles there are all very old. They stopped making wine themselves in 1988 and do not sell the wine that is in the cellar. It was basically a cavern, lined with casks, and shelves or holes in the wall where wine bottles were stacked. The amount of dust and mold was insane. The further you went down into the cellar, the older the wine. The owner then offered to open up a bottle of wine made by his father. It was a 47 year old red wine. Right there in the cellar he pulled it, cracked it open, checked to see if it was just vinegar at that point and then we all got a bit to try. The smell was indescribable, but it didn't smell like wine. It had a lot of sediment in the bottle, but it didn't taste bad. It was definitely a good experience, from now on I can say on April 1st, 2010 I had a 47 year old bottle of wine. We all joked that if we got sick from it, there was the April fool's prank. After the tasting we had time off before dinner so we walked around and looked at all the different shops. There are tons of small shops all around Orvieto that you could spend days exploring. We also saw a street performer in the streets, juggling....he wasn't really good, but interesting to see that. Dinner was fresh pasta with a pork and beef ragu and then homemade Italian sausages with beans...the sausage was awesome. After dinner we all were free to do what we wanted. I came home only to crash pretty early after our long day of walking and my early class Friday. Then there was of course more overnight drama, but I am trying to stay out of that.