Posted by Caroline Powers on Saturday, May 20, 2017 in 2017 Blog post.

On Wednesday, we had the opportunity to go up into the mountains of Cefalù and take a cooking class. After a curvy bus ride and 15-minute uphill hike, we finally made it to our destination. Our class was held in Nino’s modern home, complete with a large kitchen, extensive garden space, and plenty of seating for all 26 of us. Before we started cooking, we got to explore the gardens, where Nino grows many of his ingredients along with many different types of flowers: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4s1HHgmE7V-RFMza2ZCdFYtaDA

My favorite dish that we made was the arancini, which are stuffed rice balls which are coated in bread crumbs and deep fried. We made some stuffed with eggplant and cheese and others stuffed with Bolognese, both of which were delicious. We stuffed and shaped the rice balls, and then rolled them in flour, egg, and bread crumbs to prepare them for Nino to fry: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4s1HHgmE7V-S25ybkkxT2prSlk 

By the time we finished the rice balls, about 3 hours had already passed so Nino decided to take over most of the cooking so things would go faster and to give us some time to just relax. It was nice to have time to just hang out with everyone, and Peter taught a large group of us how to play Briscola, a popular Italian card game that is similar to spades. The rest of our meal consisted of a pasta dish with lentils, skewers of sausage wrapped in leaves, and crepes with ricotta filling. By the time we finished our crepes, we had been there for at least 6 hours and I was very ready for bed.

I was expecting this cooking class to be similar to cooking classes I’ve taken in the United States before, but I found it to be pretty different. The cooking classes I have taken were always indoors and at some kind of cooking school, but this one was at someone’s house instead and we did most of the cooking outside. Also, this Sicilian class seemed to focus more on the experience of cooking rather than just learning how to cook certain dishes. I really enjoyed being able to just hang out and talk with our group and do some cooking together.