Italian Cookery

Course Overview 

During this 10 week course you will learn to prepare and cook a range of traditional Italian foods, dishes and desserts. Pasta will obviously feature highly, but it won’t be all about Italy’s best loved staple. You will learn how to make pesto and a range of pasta sauces from scratch. You will also learn how to make tasty pasta from scratch. Using dough that you make in class, you will also make your own pizzas. Other dishes will include Bolognese, Bruschetta, Pasta Bake and Lemon Chicken with Fennel. Those with a sweet tooth can look forward to making Tiramisu, and the course will conclude with the preparation of an Italian Buffet in week 10.

The course structure isn’t set in stone, so course participants will have the opportunity to suggest dishes that they would like to learn how to prepare. The course is very much hands-on; the only way to learn. By the end of the 10 weeks you will have mastered a range of skills and cooking techniques, and will be confident in cooking a range of wholesome Italian meals for yourself and your family, and get some great ideas for dinner party dishes. Throughout the course the students will be able to contact the tutor by email or by phone for any queries they might have about recipes, ingredients or kitchen techniques. 

Additional Information

Participants will bring their own ingredients. Students will be required to bring a container to bring their finished meal home and a tea towel. Recipes will be sent in advance.

Tutor Details: Valentina Rossi

Valentina started studying cookery in the Italian famous cookery school “Il Gambero Rosso” in 2006. Following completion she joined the professional Chefs school “A Tavola con lo Chef” learning all secrets of food and its preparation specialising in pastries.

She moved in Ireland in 2008 working as pastry chef in well-known Galway restaurants then moved into the capital to work in the most fine and high standards Pastry kitchens. She studied Culinary Art in DIT and set up her own food business in 2014.

Valentina’s cookery skills have been honed from a very young age, starting when she was just a little girl pulling up a chair to stand beside her mother or grandmother as they prepared Sunday lunches for all the family. However she developed and perfected these skills by working hard in the industry and training regularly.