Three Dishes in One Class: Ravioli, Fettuccine and Tiramisu

Most cooking classes in Rome teach one pasta shape and call it a day. This one covers two, plus the dessert, in a single session, which is a fuller sweep of the technique: the same dough is rolled and cut for fettuccine and filled and sealed for ravioli, and doing both makes the difference between the two obvious in a way that reading about it does not. The tools are the traditional ones. A long wooden rolling pin rather than a machine, so the sheet comes out slightly rough and holds sauce instead of shedding it. The chef works through the method as it has been passed down, correcting your hands rather than demonstrating from the front. The pastas are then dressed with a range of sauces and eaten, with a glass of wine included. The tiramisu is your own, made earlier and eaten last. The kitchen is at Piazza Navona, so you step out of the class into the square. Cancellation is possible up to the start of your time slot. Three hours is the length, and a fair part of it is waiting rather than working. Fresh egg dough has to rest under a cloth before it will roll thin without tearing, and the tiramisu has to sit in the cold before it is worth eating, which is why it gets made first and served last. The session is built around those two pauses. It is also a meal. Two pastas, the dessert, a glass of red or white, water through the session and a limoncello or a coffee at the end are all in the price, so it stands in for lunch or dinner rather than coming before one. Booking a table for afterwards is the mistake people make. Doing both shapes in one sitting is the point, because they ask different things of the same dough. Fettuccine are cut from a plain sheet and dressed at the table, so the pasta has to carry the sauce by itself. Ravioli give the dough a structural job: rolled thinner, filled, sealed without trapping air, then served with butter and sage precisely because nothing stronger would let you taste what went inside. Fresh pasta of this kind is out of the pot in a few minutes rather than ten, which is the other thing that surprises people. The instruction is in English throughout and comes from the chef, not from a host translating for one. The address is Via Giuseppe Zanardelli 14, along the north end of Piazza Navona, and the class is held in a working restaurant kitchen, which is why the equipment is what it is rather than a domestic hob and a small pan. It is a hands-on session at a bench, so wear something flour will not ruin.