Forgive me a brief tangential departure for the world of wine, because I just had to relate the unbelievable experience I had taking a private cooking class in Bologna. An experience as authentic and cultural as this doesn't come along very often, so I couldn't go without writing about it.I booked this class through Bologna Cooking School. Carlo and his sister run a bed and breakfast, and do the cooking school thing on the side. In the interest of ethical disclosure, let me say that Carlo is not giving me anything to write this post, but we did discuss working together at some point on a joint wine/cooking educational project.

The class began with a tour of the food market in the center of Bologna, one of the most amazing markets I have ever seen. This is no hodgepodge market filled with temporary tents. It's interwoven amongst streets too skinny to fit cars, and it consists entirely of stalls and stores that are part of the buildings themselves. This market has existed here for a very long time. Bologna is a medieval city, and the market continues that feel.

Carlo took us to his favorite spots to get the best ingredients possible for our class. Here are a few pictures I snapped of the market:

A cornucopia of meats

Fresh vegetable stand built into the wall

Carlo's favorite fish and seafood store

When we got back to the bed and breakfast, Carlo led us through the basics of making Ragu and tortellini and torteloni filling. Then came the real treasure of the whole class: learning to make pasta with Carlo's sister Gabriella, a real Sfoglina.

What's a sfoglina, you ask? It's someone who makes sfoglia, of course. Sfolgia basically seems to translate to dough, so a sfolgina is someone who works with the dough, in this case to make it into pasta. What Carlo explained to me is that Bologna (and all of Italy, really) is full of old Italian sfolginas that supply all the restaurants and shops with their fresh pasta. Chefs apparently do not make past in their restaurants, it's simply too time consuming an activity and not an art they are well-versed in. So legions of old women spend their days rolling out all this pasta, and then sell it to the chefs. Carlo also explained that the art did start to die out, as many of Gabriella's childrens generation decided to work in other professions. Have no, fear, though, Carlo assured us that the younger generations have begun to pick back up the craft of rolling out pasta dough.

While we don't have to worry that Sfolginas will completely fade away, I feel like there's something more authentic about someone like Gabriella, who was probably taught by her mother, who was taught by her mother, and so on back into the far reaches of history. And that's part of what made this experience so authentic. It reminded me of learning to make pastry with my grandmother, another art that still exists but whose good techniques have faded away as subsequent generations chose to pick up briefcases and forgot about dough. These kinds of techniques can't really be learned from a book. You have to see the master do it, then give it a shot while they give you feedback. That's the main reason why I feel like this is such a priceless experience.

Here's a little video I took of Gabriella in action. If you're wondering why you're hearing French in the background, we had switched over to speaking it with Carlo, since it was easier for everyone that way. But have no fear, he does speak English.

After we rolled out the pasta until covered the entire board, we then learned how make tagliatelle, torteloni, tortellini, gemelli. Here's some more pictures:

Close-up of torteloni

After we finished making all the pasta, then of course we got to eat everything. The food was delicious but simple, in the way that very good Italian food does so well at getting out of the way to showcase the quality of the ingredients.

Here are some pictures of our meal:

Tortellini, stuffed with a mixture of pancetta, parma ham and parmigiano, cooked and served in a rich flavorful chicken broth.

Torteloni, stuffed with ricotta and spinach, in a simple sage butter sauce.

Taglietelle bolognese. Note that they don't eat spagehtti or fettucine bolognese in Bologna, it's always tagliatelle!

So if you find yourself in Bologna, I can't recommend Bologna Cooking School highly enough. Getting to connect with a sfoglina like Garbriella is like touching a part of an ancient world of food that has faded quite a bit over the last century. I think it's important that we do everything we can to keep those old traditions alive, and this is a great way to make sure this art doesn't die.