Last weekend, I skipped my front row center seat to see Chris Isaak in concert to make pasta at a friend’s home. While I’m crazy about the unique and sometimes haunting quality of Isaak’s voice—I saw him ages ago when he opened for Tina Turner… WOW to both of them!—the chance to spend time with my friend and meet new people won out, hands down. During the five years I spent writing and editing my book, MAYA BLUE, securing a literary agent and a publisher, followed by the book launch, I’ve become somewhat of a hermit, and it’s something I’m trying to change.
A chance to spend time with new friends and learn how to host a pasta making class was just what I needed.
Dahlia & Raffaele Martini. Photo from Martini & Company’s website
My friend invited Level 3 Italian sommelier and chef, Raffaele Martini, and his American wife, Dahlia, who are based in Boerne, Texas, to come to her San Antonio home and teach nine of us to make homemade pasta. Raffaele is from Cortona, Italy, where, everyday, he grew up watching his mother and grandmother make pasta, and he shared their techniques and taught us to make tagliatelle and ravioli.
The nine of us were spread out around the large island in my friend’s kitchen. We each had our own circle of flour, to which we added two fresh eggs to the empty well in the middle and slowly mixed it together with our fingers until we had pasta dough. We let it rest for a while, then made half of it into tagliatelle and the other half into ravioli filled with ricotta cheese.
Tagliattele. Photo by Brenda Coffee
Raffaele and Dahlia Martini supplied everything but the kitchen, dining room table, dinnerware and the glasses. Literally everything, including all the raw ingredients, aprons, knives, rolling pins, cutting boards, ravioli stamps, freshly baked focaccia bread, two different wines to pair with the pasta, and the savory fresh tomato/basil sauce they made for the tagliatelle and a light lemon sauce for the ravioli.
They also served the dishes and refilled the water and the wineglasses and washed the dishes before they left! They were amazing! Photo by Brenda Coffee
Our ravioli with ricotta cheese. Photo by Brenda Coffee
It was so much fun and reminded me of when I lived in the Spy House on the Hill and loved to make tortellini filled with veal, spinach and prosciutto.
Photo by Brenda Coffee
When it comes to being a hostess and setting a worldclass table, my friend ranks up there with the best. She repeated three colors: yellow, blue, and green. Down the middle of the table she lined the inside of two round glass vases with sliced lemons, Lace Cap Hydrangeas and then filled them with water. Fanning out from either side of the vases were green leaves, fresh lemons, and votive candles in small glass holders.
Photo by Brenda Coffee
She repeated the colors in the bowls at each place setting, the yellow napkins and the ingenious place card holders her daughter made and then attached to green leaves and real lemons with raffia and a glue gun.
It was all so gorgeous and reminded me it’s been a long time since I set a beautiful table and had friends over for dinner. Something I used to do all the time.
Photo of Raffaele by Brenda Coffee
If you live anywhere in the San Antonio/Texas Hill Country area and would like to host a pasta making class, here’s a link to Martini & Company’s website where you can review the amazing food they create and start a dialog with them about bringing this fun evening to you and your guests. In addition to pasta, Raffaele and Dahlia will teach you and your guests how to make pizza or do a four-course wine pairing dinner. In the future, the Martini’s will also be taking groups to Italy to learn more about the food and wine there, and from the evening I spent with them, I think a trip like that would be great fun.
