Saturday, September 06, 2008 Little hands dough it well By Michelle P. So
BUT this isn’t a language class. The kids, between nine and 11 years old, are here to learn how to cook ravioli di magro al pomodoro the way the Italians do it. And Executive Italian chef Gianluca Visciglia of Acqua restaurant at Shangri-la’s Mactan Resort and Spa is teaching them how.
In their chef’s uniform and toque, the kids look adoring until they start beating the eggs and kneading the dough for the ravioli. “Mommy, help! The egg is spilling over! Help!”
When little hands knead pasta dough, it takes forever to get the task done.
The hands can stray into someone else’s dough but for the most part of this Saturday afternoon class, are kept to their own pasty mass, molding it like abstract art whose value only a mother can appreciate.
Chef Luca, reading the minds of the young and the imaginative, has put a kneading machine on standby to speed up work.
The young boys can grow into manhood but have yet to finish flattening the dough with the rolling pins.
The dough done, the filling is next. Yes, filling because ravioli di magro al pomodoro is pocket pasta filled with ricotta cheese and spinach served with tomato sauce.
Because it’s a filling, it requires some mixing of ingredients. The mixing is not as complicated as I make it sound but it does require some precision in the amount of the ingredient to be mixed.
Chef Luca, a soothsayer in the kitchen with kids around, has the ingredients pre-measured. He too had been a boy like them and knows that the spinach, cheese, salt and pepper will get measured according to how they can be shaped into a superhero. But the kids follow his instructions well. Molto bene, very good.
The ricotta cheese and spinach filling done, it’s time to put it in the pasta dough. No sweat. Even I, who can’t slice a cake without leaving it like it’s been bulldozed, can put the ravioli in the pasta dough.
Filling now in the pasta dough, it’s time to slice the dough into rounds using a pasta cutter and locking its edges using a fork. The kids are doing it as instructed. Molto bene, very good.
The ravioli is ready to be cooked. A few minutes later, tadaah!, a plate of ravioli di magro al pomodoro is brought back to the table.
The mothers, looking at a Michelin-starred restaurant future for their children, are beaming with pride, snapping shot after shot of this prodigious chef moment. They imagine dishes named by their children after them; they imagine international fame for their little chefs.
Jason So, awarded Most Enthusiastic Little Chef, says about making ravioli di magro al pomodoro, “It was easy, Auntie.”
This is my nephew who, when he was five years old and was left alone with me for a day, praised my cooking. I simply had boiled him an egg. It was the most wonderful compliment I’ve ever received and it brought me to tears and Jollibee.
