For founders of Origins Italian Cooking Classes, Anna and Sara, teaching cooking is a great way to share their culture and their love of Italian cuisine. Both are of Italian heritage, bringing recipes and techniques they learned in their mother’s and grandmothers’ kitchens to an Australian audience. In a way, cooking for others is a way for them to continue their forbears’ legacy and even to ‘be’ with them.
Cooking for others is an international love language. It is a gift that takes time and effort, planning and preparation.
Food embodies both sensual pleasure and selflessness. When we prepare food and dine with others, we take part in their culture and begin to understand them.
Sara was born in Liguria, Italy, migrating to Australia in 2017 for love. She says: “I believe that cooking for someone is one of the most important acts of love. In my gestures in the kitchen, I see and recognize in me that which defined the women in my family who came before me… In my earliest recollections as a child, I see my mother and my grandmothers cooking. Sounds of knives slicing, wooden spoons stirring. Soft simmers, inebriating scents, slow and skilful gestures. Cooking was an opportunity to be together, to share in everyday life.”
For Anna, Australian-born to parents of Italian heritage, cooking for others is an act of love – love for ingredients, respect for the land and for those who produced the food and love for her late husband Silvio who had been her mentor. Anna tells us, “I realized that I could keep his memory alive, continuing to pass on his teachings and Italian traditions, through cooking.”
Origins classes are held in Anna’s home near Beenleigh. As we enter the house, the ladies greet us with broad smiles. Sunrays stream through the kitchen windows and we feel instantly welcome.
There’s a lot of preparation evident for this class to run effectively, with each individual’s working area set up with cooking utensils and the portioned ingredients we will need to make our two pastas.
Firstly, Anna demonstrates how to make pasta.
Our first dish is Tortelli Maremmani; big square ravioli with ricotta and spinach filling. They’re one of my family’s favourite pasta, so this dish is a big hit with us. Anna teaches us how to master a manual pasta machine, we learn how many times to roll the dough through the machine, and the feel of the dough when it was just right for ravioli.
We cut the ravioli by hand with a cutting tool, dressing the cooked pasta in a decadent whipped butter and sage sauce (a herb that’s easy to grow at home).
The remaining part of our dough is used for the second pasta, hand-cut tagliatelle, made in a traditional way I have not seen before. Meanwhile, Sara makes a fresh sauce from baby tomatoes and basil to dress the tagliatelle.
We enjoy tasting both pastas accompanied by a glass of Prosecco, while Sara and Anna prepare boxes of our pasta for us to take home.
It’s not just pasta we take home, though. It’s tips and tricks, cultural information, but even more, a sense of carefree joyfulness that comes from creating and giving. Both ladies carry a sense of bonhomie, and their passion for food is obvious.
Anna and Sara also run classes in Aperitivo, Pane and Grissini, Desserts, Gnocchi, Tuscan Dinner, Italian fresh pasta, Italian lunch, Lasagna, Pizza and Focaccia, and Sugi (sauces)
If you want to give a gift that brings joy, sensory satisfaction and some healthy life balance thrown in, Origins Italian Cooking Class fills the bill perfectly. To give this as a gift to yourself would be even better – from Italy with love.
Origins Italian Cooking Classes, 55 Bronzewing Cct, Bahrs Scrub, Queensland.
NOTE: Buy classes before 31 December 2024 at a special price of $89 per person.
Good Food Gold Coast dined as a guest of Origins Italian Cooking Classes.