Our first day making pasta dishes and they definitely were not similar to anything I've eaten in Italy. Butter, cheese, cream and rendered pancetta fat made both of our recipes today obscenely rich. I'm surprised they didn't have us sign a waiver before tasting, let alone anyone actually eating an entire plate. I have to admit, though, that the fettuccine alfredo was pretty tasty.

Prep had some difficulties again today. I was portioning out 13oz of cream per student (13oz per student!) and Chef Guevara had to struggle to track down sufficient quantities of the fat-rich liquid. Eventually, however, everything was portioned out.

There were quite a few ingredients, most of which had to be refrigerated (milk, cheese, eggs, cream, etc.). We could easily keep these materials in our lowboy refrigerator at our stations. Unfortunately, one of the other courses had taken the full sheet trays that act as the trays in the lowboy. Without them, there is only a single level, which wasn't really sufficient for our ingredients. Frustrated, I snuck into Course 2 and liberated one of theirs.

First thing, we made 6 cups of Bechamel. Once again, this white sauce didn't pose any problems, though the large quantity was a bit intimidating (at least to me). Chef Perez noted in one of his previous jobs that they would make a gallon of the stuff on a daily basis.

We also prepped the filling for the ravioli we're making tomorrow. The recipe for this filling is very simple: ricotta, basil, egg, cheese and salt and pepper. What was interesting was that Chef Guevara encouraged us to doctor up the filling to our tastes ... add what we think would be good. Alrighty then. I added some minced thyme, parsley, roasted garlic and a dash of nutmeg. I'll have to see how it turns out tomorrow after melding for a day.

I've made homemade pasta before, but I use a very nice Italian pasta machine with a motorized attachment. Today, I got to make pasta with a less expensive machine by handcrank (thanks to the lack of a magnet to hold them, the cranks were hitting the floor all morning). Frankly, I rather liked it and took to it very well. I even got the hang of the trick Chef Perez showed us, which was to turn the pasta into a continuous loop once you've rolled it out some. This way you can crank with one hand and your other hand can keep the pasta moving through the rollers. It is a very efficient method for rolling dough.

After resting all of last night, my pasta dough worked like a charm. I made some excellent fettuccini noodles. The texture and color were spot on, thanks to the semolina.

Making the pasta sauces was fairly straight-forward, but timing the cooking of the pasta and the sauce together takes some experience, I think. It wouldn't take much to overcook either pasta or sauce, if you're not paying close attention. I did well; the noodles for my alfredo were slightly overcooked, but I still got an A-. My carbonara was "awesome." I was especially proud of my plating on that one. The sauce was a perfect consistency that allowed me to pile the noodles quite high.

We finished the day by rolling out more pasta dough for the Bolognese Lasagna, which we will construct tomorrow. For me, that was fun. I have to admit, the days do fly by.

In addition to finishing the lasagna, tomorrow we are scheduled to produce, ravioli, fried polenta cakes and soft polenta with mascarpone. Thank goodness I'll have a weekend to recover from these rich dishes.