Italian Masterclass

I was beyond excited when I had the Italian Masterclass booked for me at the Novikov Restaurant in Mayfair.

I love, love, love Italian food and to be able to attend a cooking class to learn new skills and how to create some mouthwatering dishes is a dream come true for me!

Our day started with a simple but yummy breakfast and then we were greeted by Baldo, the Italian head chef, who talked us through what we would be cooking that day:

• Parmesan Soufflé
• Culattello with deep friend Gnocchi
• Tortellini with Ham
• Tagliatelle Bolognese
• Straw & Hay pasta
• Lasgane
• Piadina with Squaquerone
• Rice Cake

We were lucky enough to be the only two attending the class so we were really able to get stuck in and make the most of it whilst being tutored one on one.

Baldo was so friendly, informative and really explained everything in detail, ensuring we understood the process and why it has to be done.

First things first we had to make a start on the bolegnese as it needs 3 hours to cook. Once we had prepped the veg and started cooking the sauce we could move onto making the pasta.
Straw & hay pasta is a reference to the colours....green and yellow. To get the green we used a spinach paste. Once the pasta was made and was the right consistency we needed to let it prove in the fridge.
We then made our dough for the gnocchi and then for the piadina bread. Both needed time to prove also.
During all of this we also had to keep an eye out on our bolognese....can't forget about that and risk it getting burnt!
Once the pasta, gnocchi and piadina dough were ready we were good to go with rolling them out and prepping them.
We used the pasta to create lasagna sheets, tagliatelle and tortellini and were shown in detail how to create the perfect tortellini shape.
It's fast paced and very hot - there is a very large furnace oven we were working in front of and used to cook our lasagne and piadina breads.
We didn't have time to make the rice cake ourselves so the pastry chef made it and gave us a detailed description of how he made it.  

The class is 3 hours (although we were lucky enough to get an extra hour and a bit) and once you have cooked everything on the menu, you are taken to a table where all the dishes are brought over to you and paired with wine.

I cannot stress how amazing all the dishes tasted....I literally had a party in my mouth and the lasagne tops my lasagne post by far (don't get me wrong, that lasagne is very tasty but this one is just pure heaven and beyond flavorsome!!) so will definitely be recreating this version from now on!

Rice Cake

Tagliatelle Bolognese

Tortellini in chicken broth

My highlights of the day were:

• Making the pasta from scratch and learning how to make tortellini and tagliatelle and realising it's not hard at all and very doable at home!  
• Being taught the proper way to cut vegetables
• Being told my roux (béchamel sauce) was perfectly smooth and shown to the other chefs
• Getting to taste some of the cured meats and cheeses as we were cooking
• Eating all of the amazing food we had slaved away in the kitchen and being proud of ourselves that we had made them all
• Finding out some of the recipes are the chefs own family recipes, the rice cake recipe is 100 years old and is the grandmothers own recipe of one of the chefs.

The actual restaurant itself is beautifully decorated, it really reminded me of my holiday in Sorento with all of the lemon and olive trees. I really love how they had mini pots of herbs on the tables as decoration and all of the fresh produce on show by the kitchen area. It's quaint with character and the staff were just so friendly...they really made our day extra special!

I really recommend this class if you love Italian cuisine and want to learn new techniques and how to make pasta from scratch along with different methods to cook with it. 

Novikov have different Italian classes each month and cost £75.00 per person. It's well worth the money as you learn so much, get a recipe pack to take home, get to eat all of the food you made (and whatever you can't eat is packed up into a doggy bag to take home), you can have as much wine and prosecco as your heart desires and you go home with a new found knowledge of food. What more could you ask for?!

I definitely have a buzz for cooking classes now and would love to attend an Indian cooking class next.

Lasagne going into the oven!

Cooking the Piadina bread

Making Tortellini

Eating our delightful feast!

Prepping the fried Gnocchi