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Chapter Nine
Well, this looks very official, doesn’t it?I stood at the doorway of the dining room, which had been transformed into a mini cookery school.
Four individual cooking ‘stations’ had been created on the table. Each one had a large wooden chopping board, a red plastic chopping board and cream branded Taste Holidays apron on top, plus a big silver chopping knife to the right-hand side.
Then, in the middle of the table, a selection of ingredients including eggs, sugar, chopped tomatoes, sponge fingers, flour and different vegetables had been neatly laid out. There were also silver mixing bowls, a whisk and various other cooking paraphernalia. I was excited to find out what we would be making.
We all took our places, standing at individual stations. I opted for the bottom end of the table.
Moments later, in walked Lorenzo, which surely must mean ‘god of chefs’ in Italian (completely shallow observation, considering I hadn’t actually tasted his cooking—the few slices of salami and cheese we’d had earlier hardly qualified). Either way, I’d decided his sexiness alone earned him godlike status.
‘So, this afternoon, we will be making classic tiramisu, and also we make de tagliatelle al ragu. Okay?’ he asked, looking at us one by one for confirmation. ‘Bene. We start with tiramisu. I need one of you to separate six eggs and put the yolks into the bowl.’
‘I’ll do it!’ Daniel volunteered excitedly.
‘Bene. After, you will add nine tablespoons of sugar,’ said the god of chefs in his sexy Italian accent as he passed the bag to Daniel.
Lorenzo talked us through each of the steps, and we divvied up the tasks. I was responsible for soaking the sponge fingers into the coffee and marsala liqueur mixture that Francesca had created. I layered the soaked biscuits in the baking tray, then covered them with the mascarpone cheese and egg white mixture Grace and Daniel had whipped up.
‘No, not like that,’ said Lorenzo as he looked over at the tray, disappointment clear in his voice. ‘Too thick, too much.’
Great. I never claimed to be Jamie Oliver, but I thought I would at least be capable of spreading cream over some biscuits. Evidently not.
‘Is that better?’ I said, seeking confirmation after scraping off a thin layer and transferring it back to the cream bowl.
‘Is a little better,’ he muttered, barely looking me in the eye. ‘Continue.’ I admit I was finding this a little difficult. I was used to leading my team and giving other people feedback about their work, not the other way around. And when I did receive comments from clients, they were almost always positive.
Earlier he’d hailed Grace’s whipping asbuonissimo, Francesca’s mixture wasperfetto, and now my layering and spreading was basicallyshitto(I didn’t know the Italian for shit yet, but seeing as everything seemed to end in an ‘o’ over here, I figured it was bound to be something like that).
I carried on with my biscuit-then-cream layers until they were all used up. I then smoothed the surface neatly and dusted the top with cocoa powder as instructed. I thought it looked pretty good, even if I did say so myself.
Lorenzo looked at it and grunted.
‘So now, I will put this in the fridge for a few hours and we eat for dessert later.’ Well, I was guessing that’s the closest I was going to get to an approval from him, then, if he was taking it from the table to chill.
‘Next we make ribs with olives, and then tagliatelle al ragu,’ he said as he took the tiramisu dish into the kitchen.
I’d always wanted to know how to make my own pasta, so moody Italian chef or not, I was determined to enjoy learning this.
Once we’d prepared the ribs, which involved veg and herb chopping ready for Erica to brown, then add to the meat with the wine, tomatoes and olives, we got cracking with the ragu. This called for yet more chopping. Each of us opted for different vegetables. I went for carrots.
‘Finer, finer,’ instructed Lorenzo.
Oh, for goodness’ sake. First I couldn’t spread cream, now I couldn’t chop. Christ.
When he was satisfied that everything was diced finely enough, it went into a saucepan with cold olive oil. The meat, he told us, would be added later once the veg had been fried slowly, and then we’d add red wine, tomatoes and salt and pepper. So whilst that was doing its thing, it was on to make the pasta.
We tossed the flour from the bag out on the wooden board, made a well and carefully added the eggs into the middle.
He then told us to gently mix them together to form a dough, but according to Lorenzo, mine wasn’t smooth enough. He took my dough and worked on it himself.
‘Here,’ he said, patting the dough he’d perfected. ‘This is better.’
Well, clearly! You’ve done this a billion times, whereas I am a home-made pasta virgin.
He was beginning to irritate me. Was minereallythat different to everyone else’s?
Next we had to roll it out with the rolling pin. This was hard work, but like with everything I do, I gave it my best shot.
