Ciao! Recently I went on a trip to Italy and knew I had to take a cooking class while I was visiting Rome. Not only was the food fantastic, but so were the sights, attractions, culture and history. After doing some research I decided on taking this 3 in 1 cooking class in Piazza Navona with Eat and Walk Italy. I liked how the class provided an opportunity to make classic Italian dishes such as Fettucine, Ravioli, and Tiramisu. They also had flexible options for days and times, which made it easier to accommodate into my itinerary. I ended up picking the 10:30am class, so that I would have time to see the other sights and attractions the rest of the day, as it's a 3hr class. It also fit well into my schedule that you get a chance to eat what you cook in the last hour, so it served as lunch as well.
The studio is accessible by transit, and I had no issue arriving, plus it was located nearby other attractions such as the Pantheon and Castel Sant'Angelo. The class I took was full and had about 15 people in total from all over the world but was taught in English. Most people were from Britain, Australia, or the U.S., which made sense given those are the predominant English-speaking countries.
To start off the class, you're introduced to your instructor, and they have aprons and wooden cutting boards prepped for each person with a rolling pin, flour, salt, and an egg. The first dish we made was the tiramisu and they asked for volunteers for each step. So, there's a bit of demonstration for this component, as it's made for the whole group rather than individually.
First, they started off with mixing the eggs with the sugar and then whisking the egg whites until peaked. From there, we added the two together by folding them into the batter. After, we each individually were given a glass where we were instructed to break biscuits in half and dip them in cold coffee that we break down into the bottom of the glass. After adding a layer of the egg mixture, another coffee dipped biscuit split in half, a layer of egg mixture, and a sprinkle of cocoa powder on top. For some reason, I thought tiramisu was a lot harder to make than this, so it was a pleasant surprise!
For the next section, we made the pasta dough by creating a well in the flour on the cutting board and breaking the egg with a fork into the middle and slowly integrating the two together to form a dough, along with a pinch of salt. Afterwards we folded and rolled the dough lengthwise to the width and length of the board and cut it in half. For the first half we folded into thirds and cut them lengthwise to width of a pinky finger and picked it up with the middle of the knife to have them unfurl. This part was really cool! Then we picked up the pasta and swirled them into a nest on the board to wait for boiling in water later. From there, we used the other half to make the ravioli. Using a spoon we sectioned off 6 small mounds of ricotta cheese mixture evenly across the first upper half of the pasta. After that using dipping our fingers in water, we traced it around the edges, folded it over in half, took out the air bubbles and used a ruffled edge to make the ravioli.
For each person's dish, we were given name tags and after taking a group photo and cleaning up, we headed to the patio for our meals to be cooked. During the class they provided water and for the meal they give you a choice of red wine, white wine, pop, or coffee, plus limoncello after dessert. It was fairly hot as it was 34C, but they did have AC, which helped and there weren't any oven/stove components, as they cooked the pasta for each person after we had prepared them. Each person has a choice of sauce: cacio e pepe, marinara, fettucine, bolognese, or pesto. I chose cacio e pepe, which is considered a classic Italian sauce, it's made of Pecorino Romano cheese and black pepper.
The meal was delicious, and I met some really great people from the class, who shared their travel journeys and stories, which made it even better. I was also pleasantly surprised how light and fluffy the tiramisu was, as I've actually never had it before, but it wasn't too sweet, which I've heard is usually the case, so I was happy. I definitely think I'll be making more tiramisu in the future :) The only thing I wish there was more of, would be more individual cooking time where we could learn to make it separately, as I've done in some other classes, such as the tiramisu component. Also, at the end of the class, they have a QR code that you can scan and send an email with the group photo and recipes to use in the future. Overall, I had a great time taking this class and I would highly recommend visiting if you're visiting Rome sometime soon. I hope you enjoyed this review and have fun baking and traveling :)
Here is the link to Eat and Walk Italy's website: eatandwalkitaly.it
Here is the link to Trip Advisor's website for the promo: tripadvisor.ca
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