May 25th, 2017 – La Spezia – Liguria, Italy
We got back into the hotel relatively early at 10:00PM. Trent and Caryolyn are a little tired. After we parted ways when Elisa wasn’t feeling well, they continued on to Vernazza and then on to Monterosso. They did a lot of walking and window shopping. Nothing “spoke” to Carolyn, insisting that she had to bring it home with her. So they too headed back into La Spezia by around 6:30.
Elisa and I had spoken with them about having dinner in Monterosso, the largest of the Cinque Terre towns, so we assumed that is what Trent and Carolyn would do when we split up. At 7:00pm, Elisa and I prepared to go out to get a quick bite to eat at a Chinese or Japanese restaurant. Just as we were about to depart, Trent texted me indicating that they were back at the hotel. So we told them we were planning on going out and they said they would join us and be ready by 7:30pm.
We strolled down the main pedestrian corridor of the town of LaSpezia. This is a very nice feature of most towns in Italy and other parts of Europe. As we stroll down we notice there La Spezia is a very diverse city. We see many different nationalities. We see Africans, Moroccans, Indians, Asians and many others – all interacting and conversing in Italian. We see kids playing, not soccer / football, but instead they are playing cricket. Not your typical Italian pass time. The diversity is partly due to the fact that La Spezia is a city of over 100,000 people and it has been a major seaport throughout its long history. Sea ports have long been a melting pot for the different cultures that share the Mediterranean. By 8:15 we find ourselves in a Japanese Sushi/Bento restaurant.
After we finish our meal, we discuss the logistics for tomorrows main event. It will be an authentic Italian cooking class. We will be meeting with Chef Sylvia of Osteria del Corte. This restaurant has been praised for over 7 years in a row. They specialize in Ligurian cuisine but also offer a wide range of other Italian cuisines. We are to meet at the Central train station in La Spezia, where someone will be holding a placard with our name on it. We are to be there at 10:00. By 10:15, Alessandro, Sylvia’s husband and partner in the restaurant meets us. He leads us on a short walk back to the restaurant. On our way he speaks of the City of La Spezia, how it is he and Sylvia came to open their restaurant, their 4 kids and life in this part of Italy. It was a great way to get to know our hosts for this cooking adventure.
When we arrive at the restaurant, we meet Chef Sylvia. She is already busy in the kitchen and has a staff of 4 Sous chefs hard at work. They are making preparations for the days menu. It is now 10:30 and she dispatches us with her husband to go to the local open air market, which is a short walk away. The tells us that the city has had an open air market for centuries. It used to be at another location in the city that was much smaller. He says that La Spezia was a small town of only 7000 residents for hundreds of years, when in the 1870’s an Italian Naval base was opened very near the city. Between 1870 and 1879 the city would grow to over 100,000 people. That is when they had to move the market to its present location.
The tour of the market is really amazing. There are countless stands with a colorful assortment of fruits, vegetables and flowers. Carolyn cant help but notice the beautiful plums at one fruit stand and she picks one up to show Trent, Elisa and me. She immediately garners the “international eye-roll” from the seller and many other customers. Finally Alessandro explains – “pleeza no toucha da frutta – unlessa you gonna buya eet”. Carolyn is now mortified and she promptly puts it back and wipes her fingerprints off of it. Alessandro stops at many stands buying fresh fish, herbs, vegetables and some mortadella. He explains we will use the mortadella in a traditional Ligurian dish – stuffed mussels. Apparently this part of Italy is a huge provider of mussels to Italy and other countries.
We make our way out of the market and we really enjoyed the shopping experience. When we get back to the restaurant, Chef Sylvia get aprons for each of us. This is a private cooking class for just the 4 of us. Its a good thing, because the tiny but modern lay equipped kitchen is full to capacity. Our first mission is to take the mortadella and to begin dicing it up into small bits. This is then mixed with parmesan cheese, parsley and eggs. That moisture is set aside – this will be the stuffing for our mussels. Next we must clean the mussels. Chef Sylvia shows us the tiny tendrils that extend from the flat side of the mussel and how we must pull it down toward the front of the mussel and break it free. These tendrils are what the mussels use to attach themselves to the seabeds where they are grown. While we do this, one of the Sous Chefs has filleted some nice young cod fish. Chef takes the fish bones and the fish heads and adds it to a stock pot, adds water and sets it on the stove to boil. We then go on to shelling and deveining the shrimp. Chef Sylvia take the shrimp heads and adds it to the stock pot where she is making the fish stock that will be used when we make our risotto. To the stock she adds some herbs, and salt and lets it boil. Wile the fish stock is boiling, Chef Sylvia shows how to stuff the largest of the mussels which are still alive and raw. We must use a knife (dull) to insert near the base of the mussel on the flat side and slide the knife around the top of the mussel reaching and cutting the animals main mussel that allows us to open the mussel. We then stuff the mortadella, egg and cheese mix liberally into the mussels. Once stuffed, the mussels are layered into a medium sized pot that has a tomato sauce concoction inside. The sauce has been prepared with some tomato paste, herbs of onion, garlic, shallots and onions. The stuffed mussels are pressed into the tomato sauce. There are so many they are layered on top of one another. She then used a small plate to press the mussels into the sauce so that they are covered. She leave the plate on top to act as a lid while she simmers them in the sauce on the stove.
As the fish and the stuffed mussels continue to cook, Chef Sylvia show us how to prepare our main course. It is a very simple dish where she takes parchment paper, lays down a bit of olive oil on it. The then lays on the thin cod filets on top of the olive oil, she sprinkles a little salt on them, then covers them with minced fresh tomatoes. She adds more olive oil alone with garlic and parsley. She sprinkles a little more olive oil on them and folds up the parchment paper and seals it tightly. These will be baked in the oven and served as our main course in the parchment paper.
We then move on to starting the risotto dishes. She places a lot of butter – 1/3 of a cube of butter – easily 4 tbsps into each of our sauce pans. As the butter begins to melt she adds the garlic and shallots. We brown it a bit and then comes the rice – Carnaroli rice is best for risotto because of its starch. We then brown the rice with shallots and garlic. Before the garlic and parsley can turn brown (and bitter) she adds just enough fish stock to cover it. The steam comes billowing up at us – two people on each side of a very unique double sided stove. The stove top is induction type stove. The entire surface can ace as a heating element when a pot or pan with enough steel on it is placed on it. What is neat about the stove is that the surface remains cool and the heat is entirely transmitted into the pan. This keeps the tiny kitchen relatively cool. – Enough about the stove, as the steam billows up, we must stir. Each time the fish stock begins to boil down we must add a little more fish stock. We do this for 15 to 20 minutes – that’s a lot of stirring. Towards the end, she tells us to stir less so that the risotto can begin to firm up. She tasted mine and tells me I’m a good stirrer – I bet she tells all the fat guys that. Then she adds a little salt and the mussels, shrimp and some calamari that the Sous Chef has cleaned and sliced. She adds all the sea food in and we now stir a bit more vigorously so that it can cook in the hot rice. She says we are now done and we will get ready to eat. She show us how to plate the risotto, clean the rim of the dish, garnish it with a flourish of minced parsley. After an hour of cooking with Sylvia we now wash our hands and make our way to the dining room. As we sit down It is now about 12:20 and the restaurant is now also open for lunch to the public. I’m sure Chef Sylvia is happy to have us out of the kitchen because it looks like she will be busy with the streams of people coming into the restaurant.
We are seated at a table of distinction, in the center of the nicely decorated restaurant. We sit at our table with our cooking aprons on, which certainly distinguishes us from the other customers in the restaurant. The waiters serve us locally sourced white wines to go with our locally sourced meal. The wine is wonderful – just the right amount of dry to go with the right amount of sweet. It will complement our meal nicely. We are each served the risotto dishes that each of us has prepared. It is fantastic. The rice is perfectly cooked – not too soft and mushy but also not too “al dente”. The seafood is so fresh tasting and we all love the risotto dishes we have made. Then comes the huge platters of stuffed mussels. It is a really unique dish. It is unusual to see sea food combined with meat and cheese when in Italy, but this traditional Ligurian dish is enjoyed by all of us. Then comes our main course. We are amazed that such a simple dish can be so good and it is all about the freshness of the ingredients. We are happy to take our time dining enjoying the fact that we had a hand in making this feast and learning from Chef Sylvia along the way. After our large lunch we enjoy a light desert and coffee. We almost feel like Italians. The entire day was such a treat.
It is now about 2:00 and we decide to head back to the Hotel and relax a bit.
Around 4:00PM we decide to head into a nearby seaside town Porto Venere (Port of Venus). Alessandro, has shared with us that this little seaside town is the hidden gem of the region. He says, “it is a carpet of tourists in all of the Cinque Terre during the high season – the local people will instead go to Porto Venere). Now that all of us have recovered from the amazing lunch we prepared, we decide to take a taxi the 10 miles to get to Porto Venere. It is a good thing because parking here is very difficult and the road very narrow and winding. When we get there, we are blessed with a cool breeze, sparsely populated street, many nice shops with Italian handcrafts. We spend many hours walking the streets and shopping. We get to the old church at the end of the point of land that Porto Venere occupies and we are treated to some of the most amazing views. It is said that Lord Byron was so taken with the beauty here that he dove into the gulf below to swim to one or the neighboring islands. The gulf is now forever know as the Poet’s Gulf. The Church was constructed in 1250 – 1279 on top of the remains of a much older Roman church that dates back to 700AD. Parts of the old church remain plainly visible along with the more modern church built in the 13th century. The views from the church are amazing. We make our way back into the little town and do a bit more shipping. We walk along the sidewalks that line the street that runs parallel to the water. We are again surprised at how few people there are here, when we had just spent time in nearby Cinque Terre and its hordes of humanity. By 8:00pm we decide to have a "light dinner” at the Royal Sporting Hotel. The Maitre’d leads us to a lovely outdoor table with an amazing view of the water. We decide to bypass starters and pasta. Some of us have the filet of beef prepared in a green peppercorn cause. Elisa has a gluten free pasta (amazing) along with a bowl of pea soup. We top our meal off with a fantastic Italian Barolo – Pio Cesare 2009. We savor every drop of it along with each bite of our meal. The service at the restaurant is fantastic as was the food and the view. Once again, we declare it one of the best meals we’ve had on our trip. Our Maitre’d has called a taxi for us to take us back to our hotel in La Spezia and we all decide that the next time we want to come to Liguria, we will bypass Cinque Terre and stay in Porto Venere.
After we return to the hotel, we all reflect not he very special day we had here in Italy. The cooking class was very entertaining. It is a little pricey, but I highly recommend the experience to anyone considering a trip to Italy. Hopefully, your restaurant and Chef will be as friendly, entertaining and talented as Chef Sylvia. Another unforgettable highlight of our trip.
Tomorrow we will be heading to Lake Como where we will be staying in the small town of Bellagio. We will be staying at the Bellagio Hotel – I here they have an amazing fountain in front of the hotel – oh wait, that’s the one in Las Vegas. The one we will be staying at has a beautiful lake in front of us.
That’s all for now.
Ciao!
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