Chef Patrizia’s Country Kitchen Umbria™

Tie on your apron for cooking in Umbria with hands-on cooking class with Chef Patrizia and her family in the countryside of Assisi!  She opens her family cook book and shares recipes from Umbria, dating back to the Etruscans.  Hands-on cooking classes teach you how to prepare recipes from the region, while immersing you in the history of Italy’s Green Heart.  Visit the garden and pick seasonal ingredients that are used in the cooking class.  Chef Patrizia’s advocates the use of farm-to-table products direct from her farm.  Our cooking classes in Umbria Italy include a pasta making class Umbria too!

She’ll teach you how to make Umbrian fare, including antipasto, pasta, a main course and dessert.  Learn how to prepare the classic stringozzi pasta or umbrichelli in salsa di Trasimeno, pasta with perch fillets, shallots, garlic and chilli pepper or spaghetti col rancetto, bacon, cherry tomatoes and fresh pecorino cheese.  You will learn how to make faro and fagoli, soups and salads.  Traditions include: lentil soup, roasted pork, rabbit and pollo alla cacciatora and game along with roasted fresh artichokes, wild asparagus with truffles, and chestnut soup.  You will learn about the region’s breads, pan caciato, pan nociato, pane di Strettura and the unsalted bread of Terni.  Desserts and cakes are made with almonds and candied fruit, – with such delicious creations as crostata.  One favorite dessert is the Assisi rocciata, a  pastry strudel in the shape of a spiral and brustegnolo, a classic sweet bread from Umbria’s peasant tradition.  Cooking is simple, hearty and always organic in your Cooking Vacations in Assisi!

As you meander through the property, visit Patrizia’s farm where she raises horses, rabbits, chickens and pigs.  From her farm, she produces organic ham, salami, pecorino cheese and ricotta.  From her bee hives, she creates honey and from her fruit trees, she makes jams. In the autumn, she and her family pick and press the Umbrian olives that are pressed into extra virgin oil that Umbria – cold pressed on stones and always organic.  By the end of our Cooking Vacations class, you will be cooking like a professional chef!!!  During your one day in Assisi, add on cooking in Assisi and discover the traditional cuisine.

Umbrian Cooking Classes

Chef Patrizia leads each class creating antipasto, fresh pasta and seasonal sauces, main courses and desserts.  You will mix and roll out Umbrian stringozzi or strangozzi—a thick pasta served with spicy sauce and sausage or vegetable sauce if you like.  You will learn how to prepare lasagna with asparagus or fresh artichokes too. Main courses include, wild rabbit with farm raised apple, and chicken cacciatora, roasted pork with wild fennel, along with roasted goose and duck with baby potatoes.  Vegetarian options, like bean pasta, eggplant stuffed with herbs, and vegetarian lasagna, are available too.  Homemade pasta with shaved black and white truffles is a speciality. These precious tubers found on her farm are used to top pasta, salads and frittate.  Farm fresh eggs, blend with flour, vanilla, sugar and creamy butter in dessert making too.  Create cooked cream panna cotta, biscotti and brustengolo is a traditional  dessert made with cornmeal, sugar, apples, raisins, pine nuts, lemon zest, olive oil, anise seeds, an anise-flavored liqueur, and walnuts, and it is delicious!!!  Cooking classes are hands-on and limited small groups of up to eight guests.  Following each cooking class, guests enjoy the foods that were prepared in class with a toast of local wine and water included.