We were open on a Monday again, after chef said we would be closed. This time with the schedule for this week, only Tyler and I were there with Carlo in the morning. We busted out 3 kilos of ravioli in the morning. With no customers, this is easy to do. It was a basic dough that I made and then we filled it with asparagus, onions, garlic, and some cheese. It was actually pretty fun to all line up at the three different work benches and bust it out assembly line status.
After this, Carlo wished Tyler and I ‘Buon Fortuna’ for the evening shift. He would not be working, but Chef Lorenzo would and he was not in a very good mood. It was funny, yet a little nerve-wracking to see what the evening would be like. We were going to be making similar pork roulades to the ones that we did on NYE. However, this time we were using loins, so double the size from before. So the loins were butterflied, salt, peppered, fennel seeded, garliced, herbed, then came the prunes and raisins. Because we did not have enugh prunes for all of them, we had mixed these with raisins because chef said to “camouflage and confuse” the patrons with similer items mixed in with the actual item listed on the menu. I thought we were finished, but chef wanted to keep adding in, so onto each loin went more camouflage & confusion with some red cabbage leaves, ick. Same color he said, so we went with it.
After prepping 40 of them for the 80 person party on Thursday, it was time to encase them in caul fat then encase them in the ‘sausage’ elastic that we use to keep everything together. Of course this turned out to be my job. It is basically a length of pvc tubing that we stretch elastic casing over to make sure the item stays rolled and tight. And mind you, I was about to do 40 pork loin rolls the size of my forearm. I will pause now for the jokes and snickers.
It was actually pretty funny to watch me do them all I am sure. There was some definite discussion about catso size and the average length of certain races. Appropriate kitchen talk for sure. After it was all done, we seared them off and then cleaned up to go home. Tyler and I were headed out for a gelato, yes again, before catching the bus home and we asked chef if he wanted to join us. Surprisingly, he said yes. As we walked through the sleepy town of Orvieto, we ate gelato, Black Cherry for me (3 times this week, fat kid!) there were movie poster signs up. I had seen some folks earlier in the week with popcorn, so I was wondering where this theatre was. Low and behold, I walk by it every single day, at least the ally that it is in. We took a look and the three of us decided to see a movie, dubbed in Italian. TRON. Pretty sure that it was better in Italian because we didn’t need to hear all the cheesy lines. I probably understood about 40% of the movie language, which is pretty good I think. It was nice to go and veg out in a movie and let the rest of life stop for 2 hours. Funny though, with all things in Italy, the movie had a siesta period too, when they stopped the movie halfway through to change movie reels.
I will be attending more movies in Italian, so I will keep you posted on the best ones!
Ravioli Dough Recipe
1 kilo of flour (2.2 lbs)
11 Eggs
5 pinches of salt
2 tbls. of Olive oil
Mix all ingredients in a kitchen aid mixer with the dough hook attachment. Mix until smooth consistency. Remove from bowl and knead on table for 2 minutes until smooth, cool, and slightly tacky dough is formed. Wrap in saran wrap and bench rest for 30 minutes. When ready, use pasta roller machine to make rectangle sheets. Fill, cover, cut. Boil 3-5 minutes. Serve with favorite sauce.
No comments:
Post a Comment