www.mamma-anna.co.uk
On a sunny Saturday afternoon Tom heads to Mamma Anna & Co for pastry-perseverance and plonk.
I pause but before panic has time to set in Anna slides in front of me. “This is no problem”, she says, smiling, before skillfully sliding the pastry off the counter, laying it into the pastry tin and with a few quick squeezes it perfectly fits and the hole has disappeared.
We mix ricotta cheese, spinach, an egg, parmesan and some seasoning then pour the mixture into our freshly made pastry cases. Fabrizio, one of Anna’s sons, then whips them away to be cooked. He tells us we have just made a Pasqualina, a typical Italian Easter dish, and that we could add other things next time we make one. Perhaps some different vegetables, some speck, or more egg cracked into pre-made wells in the filling before baking.
After the Pasqualina we make a range of other pastry-based treats before Marco, another of Anna’s sons, takes us to the side for a short wine tasting. Marco is an award winning sommelier, who learnt his trade on Michelin starred restaurant floors, and this really shows as he explains the key differences between the younger and more mature Gavi wines. As we sip and learn Fabrizio begins taking our finished pastries out of the oven and placing small plates of them in front of us to try.
We chat, drink good wine, and eat freshly baked pastry and before I know it the afternoon is slipping away.
At the end of the lesson Fabrizio boxes up all of our food to take away with us, then him, Anna and Marco answer any questions we have.
I left the class feeling suitably full, and more importantly like I had actually learnt something. But the most surprising thing was still to come when later on that evening, at a rather drunken house party; our Pasqualina was eaten more quickly than a tipsy-food staple, Dominos pizza.
Cooking classes cost £42 per person and are themed to the time of year. Mamma Anna & Co opens Monday to Saturday 11.30am-7.30pm.
Rather someone else did the cooking? Take a look at what Paul thought of Ceru.