Pasta Making Class in Parma, Italy - Il Filare - Part 3 (the dinner and surroundings)

What is an Agriturismo, you may ask. From About.com, it is a combination of Agriculture and Tourism. "An Italian agriturismo will usually serve foods to guests prepared from raw materials produced on the farm or at least locally. Some will allow the guest to actually participate in the activities surrounding the farm" 

Il Filare is an organic farm and bed&breakfast and cooking classes all in 1. They are situated in the middle of what they called a small plot of land (Which is really big by my standards), with a large rustic house surrounded by their farm crops. The owner is very hospitable and asked us to freely roam their estate, giving us tips on how to identify ripe berries and giving us free rein to pluck and eat as much as we want! It's a beautiful estate and as we finished the pasta class, the sun was just setting; we walked around the berry bushes excitably! 

For blackberries to be sweet and ripe, they should be entirely black and breaks easily from the stem with a light pull. If there is resistance, it means the berries are not ripe yet and will be sour.

They are super yummy sweet! It's an organic farm, so we could just pop them into our greedy mouths without washing!

After roaming around the berries, tomatoes, zucchinis etc, we were famished as it's almost 9pm by then. The italians sure have their dinners late! 

Finally, it's time for dinner, with zucchinis and tomatoes freshly plucked from their farms and rest of the ingredients used are all from neighboring farms. 

Parma Ham and Melon - superb combination! Fresh and sweety tomatoes paired with a dollop of ricotta cheese. 

Their home-baked bread from their own flours with another huge plate of marbled ham from a neighbor producer. Very good, chewy, crusty bread and fantastic flavors from the meats!

Woohoo, our ravioli, cooked quickly in salted water then sauteed with butter, salt and fresh basil. Bouncy with a bite!

The Gnocchi and Tagliatelle in the Ragu Bolognese. Wow. The ragu was rich in flavors, the pasta chewy and with just the right thickness. We were stuffed to the max but yet managed to finished all our food!

We could not stomach any more food and had to reject the dessert of frozen raspberries sorbet, another item straight from their farm. It was 55 euros very well - spent!

Leaving the land of good food!  

Pasta Making Class in Parma, Italy - Il Filare - Part 2 (Pasta Dough)

The first question the chef asked was whether we have a pasta machine at home... we shook our heads and she gave us a wry smile. "Alright, then we will do it by hand!" Thus started a long but fun knead, roll, cut process. 

First, we started with 300g strong flour (high-protein), 3 eggs and 1 yolk. Making a well in the middle of all the flour, we placed the eggs and yolk in the middle. 

Then we slowly toss the flour into the egg mix, coaxing the flour to mix with the egg into a dough. In the process, the chef did push away a fair bit of the flour, asking for a consistency that is slightly bouncy and not dry nor wet. I think this will take many trials before we can get it right. To knead the dough, we have to use 2 hands, and turn the dough clockwise (or anti clockwise) with each knead so that all parts of the dough are needed. Once the dough is a smooth ball, set it one side and cover to rest for around 30 minutes. The dough can be used once an indentation to the ball stays indented. 

After dividing the dough into small portions, we then used a giant roller to roll the dough out into a very thin layer. This has to be really thin. So, roll and roll and roll away! 

Once done, fold the dough up and cut into thin strips as seen in the picture above, unroll the strips and set them to dry out until ready to be used. There should be at least an hour.

Alternatively, if you have a pasta machine at home, it can be easily rolled out, just like below!

The next pasta we tried our hands on was the ravioli. It's the same dough, rolled out into a very thin rectangle. Place the chilled filling onto the roll, flip the top part down, over the filling, press down tightly around the dough to ensure the dough is sticking to each other, then separate each ravioli with a pizza cutter. 

Again, set them aside in the fridge, until ready for use. 

For the last pasta, we made Gnocchi, a potato pasta. This is my favourite pasta as it's bouncy and chewy in texture, has more bite compared to normal pasta. We have absolutely no idea in terms of the quantity as it was purely her measuring them out by feel! So all we got were pictures and probably, we have to consult books or google for recipe measurements elsewhere. 

Making gnocchi required us to roll the dough into long skinny rolls, cutting them into small cubes, then rolling them over the fork to create an indentation.

All done using their own grown organic flour, which they kindly gave us a precious packet to bring back to SG!

On to 3rd part for the final cooked dinner!

Pasta Making Class in Parma, Italy - Il Filare - Part 1 (Filling)

One of the highlights of hub and my recent trip to Europe was the pasta-making class in Italy that we signed up with the B&B that we are staying with. Hub has always been a fan of pasta and he can seriously make a mean dish out of it! It's thus 1 of our tasks to learn to make authentic italian pasta when we go on this 2nd trip to Italy. However, pasta making classes are really expensive, research on various sites showed prices to be at least 60 euros per pax to the very expensive 120 euros per pax. It usually includes a visit to the market in the morning to buy the produce, then off to the kitchen for a hands-on session, and ends with a eating session to taste your own pasta. 

By a stroke of luck, I read that one of the agriturismos, Il Filare, that we are staying in also teaches pasta making! It cost only 25 euro per person and teaches a variety of pasta - Ravioli, Tagliatelle, Gnocchi etc, over 3 hours. However, this does not include the dinner that we partake in afterwards, it's another 20 euros per pax for dinner, which was a fantastic spread that not only includes our home-made pasta but also a variety of other courses made with ingredients all from their own or surrounding farms, very fresh, good quality and superbly tasty!

The only gripe that we have is that the teacher, the mom of the agriturismo is not able to define the quantity of the ingredients used, going by touch and taste for the dishes. She gave us a rough guide but along the way, swipe away lots of the flour, then added some back, sprinkle bits and pieces of ingredients that we probably have to really trial and error our own way when we make pasta on our own again (Which we haven't done so!)

We took lots of pictures though, to try and note the process. Below will be the pictorial outline of our pasta class, along with the rough notes that we took!

We started with making the ragu bolognese, which is to be the sauce for the pasta. It requires simmering over 2-3 hours so always start with the sauce.

Ingredients: (No quantity as we could not catch the amount)
Carrots, onion,  celery, garlic, dry white wine, rosemary, garlic, basil, salt, tomato sauce, ground beef and sausages.

Steps: Minced the carrots, onions, celery and stir fry until fragrant, add the garlic (whole or minced), and dry white wine, continue to stir fry. Add the beef and sausages and let it stew for a while. Finally, add the tomato sauce (which can be the bottled tomato sauce or fresh home-made pureed tomatoes), basil and salt and let it simmer until it becomes a slightly dry mixture, there should not be too much liquid in the stew, the final ragu is seen in below silver and black pans in the middle.

We then started on the filling for the ravioli - Swiss Chards, Feta Cheese, Parmesan shavings, Nutmeg, Basil, Egg, Salt and Black Pepper.

Steps:
Boil the swiss chards (can be replaced with vegetable of choice such as spinach or kale) until soft and chop into a mushy mesh. Stir fry onion in butter, add swiss chards, pepper, nutmeg and salt, cook until the mixture is dry. Let it cool, then add the rest of the ingredients and stir together. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Read the next post for the dough process!