Cesarine: Market Tour & Cooking Class at Local's Home in Siena

We had a wonderful time cooking with Patrizia and her son! They were incredibly warm, welcoming and knowledgeable. Definitely one of our favorite parts of our trip, and the food was SO good!

We had such a lovely day doing this cooking class! We met our chef at her home and proceeded to walk to the local market, stopping for a coffee on the way. In the market we sampled some of the local cheese and meat and then made our choices to bring back to our chef's cozy kitchen. We started with a simple meat sauce that simmered away while we prepared appetizers using the freshest tomatoes and figs, and ricotta cheese made that morning along with "the best" local salami. We then made dough and hand rolled our pasta for ricotta stuffed ravioli. We whipped up a quick, creamy tiramisu that went in the freezer to chill while we cooked the pasta and assembled the meal. Our chef was very organized and a great teacher (and spoke English) along with being a warm and friendly host. Our lunch was super delicious and we left very satisfied, having acquired some authentic, but simple enough to recreate at home, recipes along with feeling like we spent the day in the home of a good friend! Thank you!

What a great tour and cooking class. Patrizia and her friend/translator Antoinette were absolutely a pleasure to be with. The tour and history of Siena was an unexpected bonus and one of the most interesting parts of our visit to Italy. The class was perfect and what we learned we will easily take back home and enjoy for years to come. Highly recommend.

Our time with Patrizia was the highlight of our week in Siena. Full of knowledge, she led us through the local food market with the histories of cheeses, meats, and seasonal produce in her Italian, translated to English by her lovely friend and fellow Senese, Antoinette, a translator by trade. It gave us a sense of how and why the Sienese eat as they do. Learning to make pasta with our own hands in her delightful home, I'm confident that I will be able to reproduce our results because of her detailed explanations of the interplay of ingredients, temperature, moisture, and time. We experienced the feel of the dough, knowing when to add moisture, when it has been kneaded long enough, when it has rested long enough, and the elasticity needed to produce a proper pasta. We learned to roll and cut the pasta by hand, formed in multiple shapes, as well as getting the same results with the use of a pasta machine.

While our dough rested, we learned secrets to making the smoothest custard for Zuppa Inglese, Traditional Italian Trifle and a simple, but delicious sauce for our pasta. Finishing with a full meal consisting of appetizers made from fresh ingredients bought at the market as well as her own special recipes, our hand-made pasta and sauce, chianti, and our trifle, left us more than satisfied - our tummies and our souls.

Patrizia was a great host and teacher. Welcomed us in to her home as if we were family and shared many of her pasta making secrets. Amazing time