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Abbott’s Preparation Week 23

This week has once again been super interesting as I continue my culinary school journey.

Monday started off with an Italian lesson that transitioned into a trip to the butcher’s shop where we learned the importance of having a relationship with a butcher, as that is how you get the best quality meat for a good price, and then how to cut and section a piece of meat, and also how to tie those individual cuts. Afterwards they gave us each some pork chops and meat balls to take home, which I cooked the next day (and they were delicious).

Tuesday we only had a cooking lesson, themed around Northern Italian cuisine again. We made veal (yet again), except this time we breaded it and served it with an anchovy sauce which made it very salty and savory, mashed potatoes with bits of porchetta, some pear tarts for dessert and finally, we learned to make fresh spinach pasta which we served with a bolognese sauce on it.

On both Wednesday and Thursday we had an Italian lesson, but a cooking lesson one day and a trip on the other so they ended up being very different.

Wednesday both my other classmates were incapacitated in one way or another, so I had a private Italian lesson with the teacher (which was nice as it meant I was able to learn at my own pace; which is faster, not to throw my classmates under the bus). That afternoon only one of the other students was able to make the cooking lesson which meant we each got to learn more. We ended up making some pretty interesting dishes, including fried zucchini flowers with mozzarella inside, some paccheri pasta with a tomato and eggplant sauce, chicken with sweet and sour onions and lastly, vanilla panna cotta.

Thursday I woke up at 5am to meet a taxi the school sent for me, we then picked up my classmates and all went to the Mercafir, a large commercial market that hosts vendors both local and international who have all sorts of produce to sell. We took a guided tour around the market as it isn’t open to the public, and we got to see how the buyers and sellers all operated. It was all very interesting, as it’s a side of the restaurant business that you don’t typically think about when you hear the word “restaurant” or “chef,” but it is very important nonetheless. We wrapped up the morning with an Italian lesson and were able to go home early.

This Friday was a typical Friday, with only our cooking lesson in the afternoon. It was our first Mediterranean cooking lesson (out of two), and we ended up making seafood linguine, seafood soup, baby octopus on polenta and canestrini typical of Genoa. Not my favorite cooking day overall, but the linguini was pretty tasty as it was in a nice cream sauce and it had a dash of spice balancing it out perfectly.

Lastly, this weekend I went to Venice and saw all the canals the city is famous for. It was a beautiful place overall and I think it had a perfect atmosphere of medieval and renaissance with a hint of whimsicality which I really enjoyed.

Now I’ll leave you with all these pictures so you can get a better idea of what I’m talking about.