We’ve written before about cooking class with Ernesto in Cannara’s best restaurant, Perbacco.  But yesterday, when most people were putting in a 9 to 5 workday our little group of 7 was putting in a 9 to 5 cooking, learning and eating at Ernesto’s magical retreat.  But unlike most 9 to 5ers, our day was anything but work.

We arrived at our 9:00am appointment a little late, as is our custom.  The walk to Perbacco from the villa is a pleasant 10 minute stroll, made even more pleasant by the warming temperatures and the mostly sunny skies that have settled in over Umbria these days.  The walk takes you along the main road from Cannara, a short stretch without sidewalk where you share the road with the tiny cars that buzz this thoroughfare throughout the day.  Within a couple of minutes, however, you reach the edge of town, its limits announced by a mural of St. Francis preaching to the birds and, later on, a small shopping strip with our local Conad grocery store, our favorite local pizza place (Carlo Magno) and a few other shops.  You enter the village’s main artery and wander for a few minutes down its quiet streets before you reach the wide double doors of Perbacco.  And when you enter this little oasis, beautifully and interestingly decorated by Ernesto’s wife Simona, you enter a world unto itself.

As has been the case with our previous cooking classes there, we are greeted by Ernesto and his partner/assistant Annarita, a larger than life personality that animates the restaurant and contrasts with the more reserved, cerebral Ernesto.  As has also been the case, Ernesto, not wanting to repeat dishes to our group on perhaps our ninth or tenth visit to cook with him, has done his homework and has prepared a completely unique, unusual syllabus for us.

No one would ever accuse Ernesto of not giving good value for his cooking class.  During the eight hours we spend at Perbacco we cook for five.  But it is not just cooking.  We cut, mix, chop, braise, stir and sift, smell, taste, lick, drink and smell, question, wonder, comment, laugh and smile all along.  It is a day of sensory overload, not just for the taste buds, but for the mind as well.

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Our group includes Suzy and me, our twin sons and our daughter and our sons’ two schoolmates.  Missing is a mother-daughter combo who were expected to arrive the previous night but who were bumped from their Stateside flight by an overly officious airline worker.  We are to be joined at our lunch, many hours later, by our daughter’s friend who is arriving from Rome and our friend Wendy.

We get to work slowly, starting out by listening to Ernesto describe what he has in store for us for the day.  And it is an impressive list.  There are many dishes that feature bread, including bread-based pastas.  Because he does not want to repeat the traditional Umbrian dishes that we have covered in previous cooking classes, Ernesto’s recipes are reaching further north into the Italian peninsula, including Emilia Romagna where Simona is from and Trentino Alto Adige.  A few more cooking classes, we joke, and we’ll be trying out German recipes.

Ernesto has a respect for and fascination with bread-based recipes.  According to him a place’s bread is a unique reflection of its culture, its resources and its way of life.  Today we are featuring pane carasau, the peasant flatbread from Sardinia and canederli, a bread based dumpling from the Alto Adige.

But before we get to the bread we have quail to cook.  A dozen tiny birds, whole, are place on a spit and slathered, in the best sense of the word, with a mixture of pork fat and herbs to keep them from drying out and to give them flavor.  Pancetta, or bacon, is wrapped around them to further flavor and moisturize them.   Then the spit is placed in the restaurant’s open fireplace and set to rotate for the several hours.  Throughout the morning when one of us wants to take a short break he heads over to the fireplace to check the progress of the roasting and take in the unforgettable fowl aroma, which is anything but foul.

And so we begin working on a dozen fronts at the same time.  A pot filled with cuts of pork is set aside to slowly braise for a ragu.  Another pot, filled with quail and olive oil is set to braise for making quail pate.  A bowl with chick pea flour and water, which has been soaking overnight is skimmed of the schiuma from the top and set in pie tins, as thin strands of onion are caramelized to make an onion tart called farinata.

We then get to work on the pastas, a ravioli to be stuffed with pumpkin puree, a specialty from Mantua in Emilia Romanga and the pane carasau, the Sardinian flatbread that has a million and one uses, including as a pasta sheet for lasagna.  Whole wheat flour is mixed and rolled by us by hand into thin sheets, to be made into spaghetti like strands on a wire strung box resembling a guitar, hence the name pasta alla chitarra.

Along the way, Ernesto invites us to join him in experiment he has been working on recently.  Cheesemaking.  For an hour or so, we warm milk to a certain temperature and add caglio, or rennet, the mysterious enzyme found in cows’ stomachs that magically converts milk into cheese and which, typically, can be bought by the general public at pharmacies in Italy.  You have to love a country where buying rennet is an everyday occurrence.

After the rennet is added the milk is warmed on a hotplate and within minutes curds begin to form.  The mixture is put in the oven where it can maintain a constant temperature for an hour or so and when it returns to our worktable the pot has transformed from liquid to a mass of curds.  Annarita carefully spoons the curds into a container, separating the cheese from the milk water and our newly created wheel of cheese is placed in a saltwater bath and stored in the refrigerator to be aged.

Here is where the real fun begins, if that was not fun enough.  With the left over liquids we start the process over again, heating it, re-cooking it to make ricotta, which literally means recooked.  Again Annarita carefully spoons the curds that form in the liquid into a basket and afterwards the small quantity we are able to obtain is placed in the refrigerator for safekeeping before we devour it at lunch. For hours we shift gears, moving from one dish to another, advancing a smorgasbord of plates toward their eventual completion.  As the hour gets later our younger members begin to lose focus and stomachs begin to rumble.  It is nearly 2:00 and it is time to eat.  As if on cue, Ernesto bids us to sit and plates are set in front of us.  The feast, which eventually stretches another three hours, is about to begin.

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And what a feast it is.

It is difficult to decide whether our handiwork is really that outstanding or whether our perceptions are simply colored by all of the work we have done, but all around the table, including Wendy and Steph, who belatedly join us for the meal, agree that it is one of the best meals we have had.  We start with bagna cauda, a rich, traditional sauce made from garlic softened in milk, anchovies, olive oil and cream, into which roasted vegetables are dipped as an appetizer.  Crostini, toasted bread with pate made from our braised quail is next (no, Pete, we are not at liberty to divulge the recipe).  It is quite a feat when pate elicits oohs and ahhs from the under-35 set.  Next is the chickpea flour farinata, rich and savory and topped with roasted onions.  Our antipasti are enough for a meal, but the plates keep coming.

Pastas come next, but are first preceded by the canederli, the bread-based dumpling made from bread cubes soaked in milk and eggs, then mixed with sautéed prosciutto, onion and parsley.  The dumpling has been stewed in a rich veal stock and served in broth.  Considered a peasant dish it is nonetheless fit for a king.  It is nothing short of spectacular.

The same can be said of the pastas that follow – the sweet, pumpkin-filled ravioli, a traditional recipe dating back to the renaissance, simple polenta in an insanely rich ragu, each bite like a punch to the taste buds and our pane carasau, the Sardinian flatbread that has been sliced in half and layered with a tomato sauce and aged cheese topped with a poached egg, resembling a simple lasagna but very different in taste and texture.  Ernesto finishes the pasta course with our handmade whole wheat chitarra tossed with a light, slightly piquant arrabiata sauce.

Once again, where mere mortals would give in, we press forward, taking in the sights and smells of the roasted quail which has been turning in the fire for the better part of the morning.  It is to be eaten with our fingers, we are instructed, the spoon that has been provided to be used for sampling our homemade ricotta which has been topped with a little fresh honey.

There are those among our group who swear that they died and were brought back to life that day while tasting the roasted quail.  One spoke of an out of body experience.  It is undeniable that there was a lot of eating with eyes closed, heads tilted backwards and eyes rolling into the backs of those heads.  Quail, pork fat, pancetta.  The holy trinity.

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At that point it is silly to even continue.  But we did.  A dessert of sbrisolona (thank you, Rafaella for the correct spelling), a crumbly cake of flour, sugar and almonds placed an exclamation point on the day.  Not a big fan of Italian desserts generally, Suzy commented that this was her favorite dessert ever.  Maybe she was speaking the truth.  Maybe it was the quail talking.  Perhaps we’ll never know.

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Cooking with Ernesto is always a treat.  And eating afterwards is pure delight.  And even this, our eight, ninth or tenth iteration (who’s keeping track anyway), it continues to be one of our favorite things to do on our visits to Umbria.  We can’t wait until our next class with Ernesto.  Featuring the cuisine of Bavaria.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy

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