The $45 fee included instruction by Loretta herself, class participation and all the food we could eat. On the menu that day were minestrone soup with herb pepper pesto, cheese and mushroom cannelloni with fresh tomato sauce, chicken cutlet saltimbocca, vegetable ratatouille and chocolate zucchini bread for dessert. Yum!
| Herb Pepper Pesto
1 small red pepper, roasted, peeled and diced
4 large ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
2 Tbsp. fresh thyme
¼ cup fresh basil
1 shallot, minced
1 small clove garlic, minced
½ cup chicken stock
1 Tbsp. sherry
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
Combine all of the ingredients (except the sherry) in a small saucepan. Season with salt and pepper and simmer for 15 minutes to achieve a flavorful, compote-like mixture. Do not overcook to a mush. Add the sherry. Cool to room temperature and serve. |
Spicy comments
While not in Lake County, the school is only about seven minutes from the county line. This class and many others are scheduled around the lunch hour from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Take a business associate with you; cooking with someone is a great way to get to know them better and your extended lunch may be overlooked.
If you’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Loretta or seeing one of her presentations at events like Vintage Ohio or Mon Ami Winery in Port Clinton, then you’re in for a treat.
A petite, friendly and energetic woman, Loretta peppers her teaching with spicy comments like, “In my next life, I want to be a Parmigiano-Reggiano cow. They get to listen to classical music and have massages twice a day. They keep a beautiful bull in the next field so the cows can enjoy him, but they don’t have to put up with the bull.”
She chats about interesting details from her life, such as how her dad would prepare tomatoes for canning in her kitchen until there were so many seeds on the floor, tomato plants sprouted between the floorboards and she had to banish him to the shed. We didn’t know whether to take everything she said literally.
She also throws in helpful tidbits to make cooking better and easier. One of the most useful things I’ve learned from Loretta is that the small cup in the palm of your hand equals an “exact” teaspoon. And, the more points a pepper has, the sweeter it will taste.
We started with the minestrone. Loretta believes in using whatever fresh vegetables are on hand.
“All good Italian housewives go to the market every day and buy what’s fresh,” she says. “And, they prepare food ahead of time.”
Loretta admits to the fear of having people come to her house and not having enough to feed them. Hence her legendary refrigerator – it has been said she could feed the entire city of Cleveland with its contents. She set out to teach us how we could stock our refrigerators like hers.
She freezes her soups and heats them up on cold winter days, serving a breath of summer in a bowl. The minestrone that day had onion, Swiss chard, zucchini, potatoes, cabbage, ceci beans, peas, basil, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and more. A dollop of the herb pepper pesto (see recipe below) in the soup was a tasty and colorful addition.
Next Loretta showed us how to make cheese and mushroom cannelloni and the fresh tomato sauce she spooned on top. Mini lectures by Loretta punctuated the preparation.
“Never use ricotta cheese made from skim milk,” she said, making sure we knew how ricotta is pronounced. “It changes the molecular structure of the cheese so it turns runny when it’s cooked.”
Jump in your mouth
She squeezed the dough through a pasta machine, adjusting the thickness on each pass until she could see her hand through the sheet. She showed us how the dough, made from semolina flour, eggs, salt, a bit of tomato paste for color and a half egg shell of white wine for elasticity could be cut into every shape imaginable.
Class participants helped Loretta fill large rectangle-shaped pasta with fresh cremini and dry porcini mushrooms, parsley, garlic and the cheese.
The chicken saltimbocca, which means “jump in your mouth” in Italian, was a meal in itself. Thinly pounded chicken breasts were stuffed with fontina cheese and prosciutto ham, dipped in flour and eggs and deep-fried. Vegetable ratatouille made from eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash, red and yellow peppers and red onion was a perfect accompaniment for the chicken.
Melt-in-your-bocca chocolate zucchini bread, biscotti and blackberries from the garden topped with fresh whipped cream finished off the four-course meal.
Loretta is building a new school just down the road from the original location. The 12,000-square-foot building will have a multi-purpose room, seven kitchens and interior walls made of glass. Angelo Pettiti will plant a chef’s garden for the school.
Until December, the Loretta Paganini School of Cooking will remain at 8613 Mayfield Rd., just east of Ohio 306 in Chesterland. To register for a class, visit Loretta’s Web site at www.lpscinc.com or call (440) 729-1110. She might even answer the phone.
Laura Freeman reviews restaurants regularly for the Lake County Business Journal. |
