Chef in a Day: Campo de' Fiori Market, Then Cooking in Trastevere

A cooking class that starts where the cooking actually starts, which is at the market rather than at the stove. The morning begins in front of the French Embassy on Piazza Farnese at 9.30, and the first stop is the Campo de' Fiori market to buy what you will be cooking. That is the part that makes the difference: the menu is not fixed in advance, it is decided by what looks good on the stalls that day, which is how Italian home cooking has always worked. From the market the group goes to a private apartment in Trastevere, a working Roman quarter across the river rather than a demonstration kitchen. A professional chef takes you through three types of pasta with three different sauces or fillings, and the meal comes out at four or five courses depending on what was bought: antipasto, the pasta, often a meat course, and dessert. The group is capped at ten. That number is what allows everyone to actually handle the dough rather than watch someone else handle it. You eat what you have made, which by then is most of the afternoon.