Learning to make orecchiette and other Apulian specialties at Masseria Salinola's cooking class
After breakfast in the Masseria’s dining room, we went back to our room to rest (and my dad had a conference call), and soon enough we returned for our cooking class.
I love doing cooking classes anywhere I travel, especially when the cooking class is specific to the area (no generic pizza-making classes in regions of Italy where it’s not a specialty) and when I might even be able to use some of the lessons at home myself. I was delighted that Masseria Salinola offered its own cooking class - another reason to just relax and “stay in.”
It kicked off by meeting the assistant, an Englishman who moved to Ostuni many years ago and helps with the cooking classes here by translating and giving light-hearted commentary. We got to know each other over some cookies and coffee.
Then the cooking class started, with the resident chef Vita giving the lesson. This first part was a demonstration, rather than hands-on practice, of making a focaccia. The dough was made with semolina and 00 flour.
For this class, the dough was already prepared from the day before, so Vita proceeded to add a generous amount of olive oil on the baking sheet.
Then spread it around.
And then she added the dough to the sheet.
Smoothed it out with her hands.
Then she added some cheese.
And then the cooked turnip tops, cime di rapa.
The filling doesn’t go all the way to the edges, because then she’d fold the dough over.
Like so.
After completely enclosing the filling, Vita then squished the whole envelope down.
And then made those characteristic dimples of focaccia.
After that sheet was sent over to be baked, she showed how to make the dough for the next day. The semolina flour, 00 flour, and water were mixed together.
Then she added in the small amount of mother dough that was left to ferment, from two days ago. She kneaded this all together.
Then she took out a small amount of dough to serve as the mother dough for two days later. She covered this in olive oil to prevent it from drying out. And so continues the chain.
The next part was hands-on.
We each got a pastry paper cup, with a pre-measured piece of short dough.
We spread the dough around the cup with our fingers, then poked it with the blunt end of a toothpick many times. And that was it! They whisked these pastry shells away to be blind baked, then filled with fruit and cream.
Next we prepared the zucchini parmigiana. They already prepared the thinly sliced strips of zucchini, which were breaded and fried I believe.
First we ladled a bit of creamy tomato sauce into the baking bowl.
Then put two slices of zucchini, folded over, like this.
Then a sprinkling of shredded cheese.
Then another layer of zucchini.
Then more cheese,…
…and then another layer of zucchini.
This was followed by ladling more tomato sauce.
Like so.
And on top of this, a sprinkling of grated parmesan cheese.
Vita was very clever to use toothpicks to distinguish whose zucchini parmigiana was whose: 1, 2, 3, 4 toothpicks, bent toothpicks, so that we would eat our own creation after coming out of the oven!
Then it was on to the main event - making orecchiette, a pasta shape that comes from Puglia. Vita explained that in the kitchen they usually use only 00 flour in their pasta, but here we were mixing it with semolina flour because it’s easier to handle for beginners.
We started with small pieces of dough.
Which we then rolled into long logs.
Then, cutting off small pieces from the log, with the same knife the piece is kind of scraped open, resulting in a flat piece with those characteristic veins. It looks so fluent, but it was incredibly hard! press too hard with the knife, and the piece splits open. Don’t press hard enough, and it’s just a gnocchi-looking piece with knife marks in it.
Vita also showed us how to make maccheroni pasta, which was “simply” a longer piece of dough, with a different effect of the knife pressure. Of course, “simply” is in quotes because it looks a lot easier than it was (though I think maccheroni were easier to make than orecchiette).
And here’s our final output, with my mangled ones in the lower right corner. They told us for health reasons, they wouldn’t actually be cooking these for us to eat! As there would be no way to separate who made which pasta. Instead, they would be feeding these to the chickens, and we would be eating the same pasta shapes, prepared in the kitchen.
While we were waiting for the baking and boiling to be done, we snacked on the turnip greens focaccia, which came out of the oven.
Along with generous pours of white wine.
Delicious!
Then we sat down with our assistant for lunch. There was a bread basket, this time with taralli too.
The pasta course were those orecchiette and maccheroni shapes, in a plain tomato sauce. Sometimes plain is so satisfying, with the sauce not too thin, perfectly coating the pasta.
Then out came our zucchini parmigiana as the main course. Mine had the three toothpicks in it. This was also delicious - I hope to be able to make this at home someday.
And finally, our pastry shells, topped with creme and red fruits, served on top of more creme.
And we ended our meal with tea and coffee.
This was a very special morning to spend with Vita and the English assistant (I sorry I can’t remember his name!). While I might not have mastered the art of making orecchiette pasta, and will just buy it from now on, it was really fun to get my hands dirty and at least try it. Attempting to make orecchiette made the skill of the pasta makers even more apparent.
The cooking class had a graduated fee: the more people participating, the less expensive per person. For the two people minimum, the charge would have been 135€ per person. There was originally supposed to be two more people joining, but in the end it was just me and my parents, so the fee was 115€.
