What we learned in culinary school this week: Week 8 (Part 1)

We did do some other stuff in addition to the dinner.

We did pasta (dried and fresh) on Monday and Tuesday. I'd taken a pasta making class there before, so a lot of it was review.

Dried pasta: If you don't have the time or inclination to make pasta from scratch, buy Barilla or DeCecco at the grocery store. These are both high-end, Italian pastas, in fact Barilla is the most consumed pasta in Italy. When shopping for pasta, look for Italy as country of origin. Even inexpensive Italian pasta is okay.

When cooking pasta, always use a lot of water and always salt the water. Then it's just a matter of following the instructions on the package.

Noodles should be sopping wet when they go into the sauce. The water helps the sauce adhere. Then toss the pasta and sauce three times, then onto the plate and serve.

Basic and very easy tomato sauce: Olive oil,
Marzano tomatoes, garlic and basil.

Bolognaise sauce in progress. It will cook down
until it's almost dry.

Finished bolognaise with pasta.

Fresh pasta: We used the Kitchen Aid pasta roller attachment to roll our pasta. I had bought one last year after taking the recreational pasta class. Making fresh pasta really isn't that hard - it's just semolina flour, all-purpose flour and eggs. If you haven't tried it, you should.

Once you've got the basic pasta dough, you can run wild: