orvieto a tutti: cooking in orvieto

the last few days have been pretty crazy

saturday we had our first cooking class with Chef Lorenzo. we had to meet up at the piazza del republica at 8 in the morning and then we met up with at Lorenzo's restaurant Zeppelin where we had our first cappuccino of the day and left for the market. the market on saturdays is a little bigger than the market on thursdays and much busier. we stopped at a few different vendors and tried a variety of things. our first stop was at a third generation meat vendor, his grandfather started coming to the orvieto market to sell. he had an entire cooked pig ( head and all ) on his table and was carving from it. we then tried some cheese and finished buying fresh ingredients for our meal. we then stopped at a local pastry shop from some treats and another cappuccino. at this point i asked Chef where to find a cannoli and he decided to add fresh made cannoli to the day's menu. we got back to his restaurant and after yet another cappuccino we started to cook. the first step was to make fresh pizza to snack on while we made the rest of the meal. katie and i made the dough while others prepared the other ingredients. during this time we also made fried bread ( tasted similar to funnel cake ) and started the noodles and sauce for the pasta. after this was done the intern chefs started pouring wine while we continued to cook. i finished the bread and started making the cannoli and pasta. i made the pasta from scratch. its a simple dough mixture that you roll extremely thin and then slice to the desired width. unlike the pasta i was used to this was still soft and only had to be boiled for a couple of minutes to get it warm. the menu ended up being: pizza, pasta, chicken, salad, fried artichokes, cannoli, and yet another cappuccino. during this Lorenzo broke out many bottles of wine and kept filling our glasses to the rim. out of our group there were only me and one other guy ( Keith ). lorenzo poured some limoncello for the girls ( a very sweet limon flavored liquor ). he then gave me and Keith shot glasses and poured us 4 shots back to back. the first shot was grappa. grappa is a liquor that is made from distilling the left over grape skins from the wine creating process it is usually about 40 % alcohol and not the smoothest drink around. After leaving the restaurant ( 8 hours later ), we all went home and slept...

sunday was an all day adventure. we had seen signs around for a serie d soccer game. the game was in orvieto but at the bottom of the hill. we had to take the finniculare down the hill and walk the remaining 3 km or so to the stadium. we got lost countless time and ended up missing the first half of the game but what we did see was an extremely fun experience. the game was free to watch and there were well over 100 fans watching. the game was orvieto vs. pontivecchio. orvieto was wearing white and won 4 - 0. the environment was an incredible thing to be apart of. I really hope i have the opportunity to make it to a serie A game.

today was fairly simple ( in comparison to other days ). we had studio and our drawing and watercolor class. we went out to dinner at mezzaluna. i had gnocchi with a 4 cheese sauce, awesome. the appetizer was something i never would have expected to be good. it was the local cheese that you dipped in honey ( sounds somewhat off putting but it was on the of the best snacks ever ).

Basta.