Italian cooking classes: the Italian food culture and how to engage all senses

The Italians’ philosophy about food is to indulge in flavours that will satisfy all your senses including sight, smell, hearing and touch-not only taste.

Great you may say but how can we manage to engage all senses only by cooking one dish?

Read the tips below for some rapid cookery courses in Italy and cheat your guests that you’ve been taught by an Italian chef!

Smell: Italians refuse to use processed flavourings like vegetable cubes as using fresh ingredients is a vital rule of Italian food. Go to a food market to buy your ingredients rather than supermarkets. Close your eyes and focus on smelling your veggies and fruits - a golden rule to pick up the best!

Touch: Touching your ingredients with care when you do the food preparation is far more important for the end result than most people think. Take the time to cut your veggies properly and be sure that they will bring up all their unique flavours.

 

Hearing: Hearing how your food cooks is a basic rule of Italian cooking classes to help you understand if the process you have followed is correct.

Top tip: Use your hearing when cooking allacacciatora – very typical in Italian style cuisine where you include wine in the sauce. You will be able to tell that the sauce is almost ready when you hear the wine evaporates.

Sight: Cooking in Italy depends very much on seasonal and local produce - adopt this perspective to create dishes that will appeal to the eye and impress. A guide to that is the colours of each season - for example in spring you would use green vegetables like asparagus, artichokes and green beans to cook risotto garmugia.

Taste: Cooking courses about Italy wouldn’t be complete if we don’t emphasize the secret to tasty food. Avoid using too much of everything- contrary to what you think you don’t need to use lots of salt to enhance the taste of your food! Remember - less is more!

BUON APETITO!