Cooking with Marcella

We started the day with a visit to the
Strozzina Centro di Cultura Contemporanea for Anni 30: the Arts in Italy Beyond Fascism.
We took the bus into the heart of town and were surprised (again!) to find the Duomo there awaiting our arrival, just around a corner. Stunning. The first time you see it, everything stops for you. The level of detail on the exterior is pure insanity, glorious but beyond comprehension!

The lines to get in weren't bad, but we had our first cooking class at the Giglio School at 2:30p, so we settled on coming back for the tour later in the week.

The class we signed up for, Toscani a Tavola, is five days, three hours a day. Our first day was pasta--4 different kinds! We made pici with a pork sausage red sauce, fettuccini with artichoke and pancetta, spinach and ricotta crepes in bechamel, and testaroli in pesto, a rare Tuscan dish made from a flat pancake, cut into diamond-shapes and boiled like a pasta. We tried all of the dishes (too much!) along with a lovely white wine that Marcella's boyfriend made (he is an organic farmer who presses his own olive oil as well). But it is her "husband" we are most fond of--the incredibly handy drawer-style dish washer that we feed several times over during our three hour lessons. We were so happy with our pasta that we (gulp) forgot to TAKE ANY PICTURES. Ah, well. C'e sempre domani!