The school arranged for three of us to take a Genovese cooking class this past Thursday: two Brazilian ladies, Irma & Zilma, and me. Our chef and teacher was Francesco Soldi, who in addition to teaching cooking to visitors like us also owns and operates his own catering service, Apriti Sesamo.

Our menu included:

Focaccia alla genovese

Trofie con pesto genovese

Crostata alla marmellata

Focaccia is a traditional Ligurian bread made with good Italian flour, yeast, olive oil, water, butter and salt. The Genovese people love their focaccia and focaccerias are as common as pizzerias on most shopping streets in Genova (Genoa).

There are certainly hundreds of different kinds of Italian pasta, varying from place to place in size and shape. Trofie, a small, hand rolled pasta, about the size of a small macaroni, is a favorite in Genova and is usually to be found on most restaurant menus, usually served with the Genovese version of pesto.

We made the dough, rolled and cut it out, and then made pesto by grinding up oil, pine nuts, and basil with a mortal and pestle—more work than I would probably ever want to do regularly; but judging by the taste, worth the effort.

Crostata (a pie or tort) is found in most Italian pastisserias. We made us ours with flour, butter, sugar, and one egg. We used a jar of apricot preserves for the filling. Again, learning to roll the dough out properly was a lesson for all of us.

Cuoco Soldi was a patient and helpful teacher, even with students such as me who clearly had never rolled out pasta dough or made a pie. Rolling out enough pasta for three of us and then forming it by hand took all four of us, including the chef, about half an hour—definitely not cost efficient.

All told, the entire lesson in preparation and cooking took us about an hour and a half, after which we had the great pleasure of eating the fruits of our labors, accompanied by a lovely bottle of Pinot Grigio.

It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon—and I learned a lot of kitchen and food vocabulary as well.