So ive been a little out of loop with this blog but when better to wrtite then when waiting for laundry?
Its the end of the first week or class and its kinda weird to think that weve been here for a week and we still have 3 months of italy to go. Most of us are happy here, not exactly what we expected but life never is, you gotta learn to roll with the punches. We learned from the other roomates alot about the school, more than we ever could have guessed. Theres two sets of classes, a master and a breve class. The master class is somewhere around 6-8 months while the breve is 3 weeks. Each master and breve class has diffrenet
nations in them. Theres the korean, japenese, brazilian, canadan, american, and english speaking mixed. Theres only korean, american, brazilian and english speaking enrolled currently, The american being the only breve course. We also learned, to the disapointment of most of us, the class is 90% watching and only 10% hands on. Its a big change for everyone in our course coming from a school where everyday we were cooking something. Its a change but you gotta get the most out of it and its not like the teachers dont know what there doing, they are easily some of the smarest and sharpest people involved in culinary ive met. Almost every instructor has a translator because they speak only italian but we have had one chef that spoke okay english. Classes go from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. with a break for lunch and a few smoke
breaks because everyone and there mother smokes in italy.
On monday we went over what we needed to be an offical italian student, paperwork/passport and all that jazz. A few of my fellow students got there first real taste of italian women when our beautiful director was going over all our paperwork. Now im not going to say any names but its easily shown that a few of them went head over heels for her, instantly. On tuesday we had our first in kitchen day; We spent it with chef mario, the only english speaking chef, going over all sorts of bread from the classic italian and cristini to a foccacia and cibatta.Wensday we got to go on a field trip to a family own cheese factory and a wine fermentation a nd distribution center. The cheese was completely produced off of milk from animals found at the farm (cows, goats, and sheep) We got to see the animals and the machines used to produce the cheese but due to health restrictions we wernt allowed into the factory. At the end of the tour we had the oppertunity to taste 4 different cheeses, a cow and sheep mix semi soft cheese with thyme, a cow/goat/sheep semi soft with toasted hazelnut, a aged hard sharp cow cheese, and an aged cow blue cheese. The first three cheeses we were told to enjoy but to wait before we ate the blue because it was to be paired with a wine wich was only produced in the town we were in. The wine we were given was a 1999 raisin wine that paired perfectly with the cheese wich was a really mild bluie cheese compared to what ive tasted in the states. After that we went to a wine distribution center, they dont grow there own grapes but the take grapes from other farmers, squeeze them and then age them in the facility. We got to walk around the complex and see the grape crushers that can squeeze 10 tons of grapes at one time. We were then led to the area where the put they barreled the wine and aged it. after we got to see all the barrles and re-fill centers we were given a demo in proper tasting and smelling of 4 diffrenet wines. We learned how to distinguish different smells, how to read a body, and what fruits give diffrent colors. The entire experience was extremely interesting and a delicious day, not to mention getting a little bent. Thursday we made pizzas in the morning with chef P. and with chef piere in the afternoon we went over multiple pastries. Friday we were with chef Danielle (Dan-yell-e) all day, we got to make gelato and a few other cream and milk based pastries. One of the best parts of the college is that every chef either currently owns or has previously owned a reasturaunt.
Thats pretty much my entire week in a blog post, hopefully this weekend I can get to asti to see somethiung more than this tiny town.
As they say when in rome...
-R
So this weekend me and a few other of my classmates decided to finally get out of this small town and see what eles the boot had to offer, we dident go to far but a little was enough for us. We took a bus down to the center of Asti, Italy for a day trip to see what we were missing, and we were some what impressed. Now if you go to a town such as Asti where you can buy pretty much anything you would need, but you have no real need for anything you end up walking around...alot. We started by hitting the open air market where there is enhough fresh food, clothing, electronics, and anything eles your heart could ever possibly need, outside. The easiest way to describe it is that its like a costco warehouse with out a roof on it. When then decided to hit up all the roads, main drags, and side street we could just to say we had left no stone unturned. While walking around we found out that all the churches in Asti are un-believable, almost completely covered in hand paintings of all sorts of biblical things. It really is something you have to see once, and the churches we saw wernt really even that big, atleast compared to the once around rome and other major cities. We continued walking around window shopping like every other tourist would and started to realize how small our small town really was, and this city too wasent at all that big, so it really made us all curious about our future here and what eles would supries us in our future tavels. After enough church hoping and aimless walking we grabbed a slice of pizza and a bira and headed back home.
