I’m never going to be able to eat dried pasta again after our time in Italy. Fresh, home-made pasta, produced with love from the finest ingredients is a totally wonderful eating experience. The pasta is softer, slightly spongy, and soaks up the flavours of the sauce. It’s delicious and very more-ish. A kids cooking class in Italy gave my boys a chance to make pasta, from scratch, and serve it to the grown ups for lunch. It was sensational, they should be very proud indeed.
What’s more Italian than pasta? What better way to get to grips with Italy than cooking it’s most iconic dish?
Pasta Starts With The Finest Ingredients and Plenty of Muscle
Free range, organic, eggs direct from the chickens and OO pasta flour, that’s it, nothing else, mixed by hand ( 6 eggs to 600g of flour) . Once the dough holds together, start kneading and stretching, working the pasta until it becomes pliable and springy.
Once a finger indentation springs back up, it’s ready for the pasta machine.
The children fed the dough through the roller, changing the setting each time to make huge sheets of golden yellow pasta. From here they cut rectangles for ravioli and fed the rest back through the machine for tagliatelli, dusting the strands with semolina flour to keep them separate.
They filled the ravioli and sealed the layers together with egg before cutting the individual shapes with a fancy roller cutter.
Was The Kids Cooking Class Fun?
You bet it was fun. My 10-year-old said it was the highlight of his trip and he was incredibly proud of what he made. He was the eldest, our youngest chef was just 3 years old, he looked pretty happy to work the dough, too.
We had a great teacher in Isobel and two lovely Italian speaking helpers, the Sylvias, all the ladies were great with the kids.
This cooking class would work just as well for adults, the finished result was professional, serious pasta, not kiddy at all. I like that, the kids were treated as capable and made the real deal not some kid-friendly dish.
The children learnt a skill and felt good about what they made, for my homeschooled boys, days like this are priceless. We’ll be looking for more kids cookery classes as we travel.
What Did The Kids Make?
The children produced the pasta, the sauces and ravioli fillings were done by the adult chefs. The finished dishes were incredibly delicious and served in succession over a long Italian lunch. They really know how to live in Italy.
We ate tagliatelle two ways, with meat ragu and with truffles and truffle oil. Two types of ravioli came next, one with spinach and ricotta, one with pumpkin and Amaretto. The pumpkin was divine and I have the recipe, I can share another time.
The dishes were beautifully finished with herbs from the farm, butter, cheeses and oils. The kids also knocked up some simple but delicious bruschetta with garlic, good olive oil, tomatoes and basil. The colours were just amazing.
World Travel Family are visiting the Umbria region of Italy as guests of Our Whole Village. For more information on their child-friendly trips and philosophy use the Our Whole Village website. There’s plenty there for travellers of all ages, armchair and actual.
If you enjoyed Kids Cooking Class in Italy you can read more about our highlights of Italy in these posts:
Riding a Bird Cage in Gubbio Umbria
Truffle Hunting with Dogs in the Woods of Umbria
Our Amazing Family Friendly Villa in Italy
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Hi there, we will be traveling through Umbria. Can you provide contact info for audible and the Sylvia’s? We would like to book a course with them and I don’t see a direct link to the course above – thanks!
I meant Isobel and Sylvias’ contact info/website – thanks!
This cooking session was organised through the hotel. I believe the name of the hotel should be in the post above, but the actual Umbria tour was privately arranged through Our Whole Village and I’m not sure if this event was laid on specifically for our group. You’d have to contact the owners, they are British, perfect English. Best of luck.
Yeah that’s all very good and well but any kind of link to the people who run the course? I mean, what part of Italy was this? It’s a very big place! Details details…
If you look above Brad, it states clearly that we were visiting Umbria with Our Whole Village. I think it’s even in bold. Have a nice day 🙂
My kids would really love this too. This is an activity I’m going to be on the lookout for wherever we go!
That pumpkin ravioli was honestly the best ravioli I’ve ever had in my life!
It looks like a wonderful experience! What a great way to get the kids involved in the amazing food culture in Italy. I’m sure they learned about a lot more than just cooking!
Yeah, for sure, like communicating with the non-English-speaking Sylvias, we’ve all picked up a little Italian. It amazes me that people think you have to have lessons to learn a language, it’s so much easier to just go there, it comes naturally.
Looking forward to the pumpkin ravioli recipe! Mmmmm. 😉
I might put it out on Chef’s blog Pam, it’s very neglected now he’s working full time. It really was a stunning dish.
Excellent! You 4 should open your own Italian restaurant in Umbria! We can adopt the role as chief tasters.