I and Marika are just back from a wonderful 3-day cooking workshop held in Milan where all best Italian and International chefs got together to share the secrets behind their recipes and dishes.

Imagine yourself in the same room with Italian chefs from Massimiliano Alajmo, Carlo Cracco, Gennaro Esposito, Davide Oldani, Antonello Colonna, Niko Romito, Andrea Berton, to Elio Sironi, Davide Scabin, Ciccio Sultano and Massimo Bottura, who was recently awarded as the best chef in the world by the International Academy of Gastronomy in Paris.

The International chefs included: Inaki Aizpitarte, Paul Liebrandt, Sat Bains, Magnus Nilsson, Yoshihiro Narisawa.

During the three days, they prepared their famous dishes, telling about the ingredients they use, why they use them and how they put them together. In a few words they opened their kitchen doors to us.

Moreover, we got to taste most of the dishes they prepared, which means that we started eating at 10am until 7pm. We promise you that even if at some point we started getting full, these dishes were so fantastic that it was impossible to resist.

Our favorite workshops were the pasta sessions. Our number one favorite pasta dish was the pasta – pizza by Davide Scabin.

We also loved the idea of Carbonara pasta for breakfast by Elio Sironi (chef at the Bulgari hotel). He made it on top a nice bruschetta bread. Very nice way to start the day!

Of course we loved Gennaro Esposito and Carlo Cracco who are always so interesting. The biggest idea among many of them is that pasta can be cooked as if it was a risotto, without boiling the pasta in the water. Of course you can only do it with very high quality pasta. Cooking the pasta as a risotto helps preserving all the health benefits of pasta.

Finally we loved the spaghetti cacio e pepe by Antonello Colonna: so simple, but so wonderful!

The other super interesting cooking wokshop was the pizza session. We never had such a delicious pizza before. We got to learn (and taste!) the real pizza Napoletana from Napoli, the real Pizza Metro from Vico Equense and the fantastic pizza with natural yeast by Simone Padoan (and we could not believe he is from Verona!). Each pizza was made in three totally different ways.

As if all this was not enough, only the best food and wine producers were exhibiting their products: from best cheese, Parma ham, best pasta, to best wines and so much more.

A Grappa tasting was a good end to such good meals.

We think the best part was to see all these chefs (some of them so young!) supporting and praising each other without jealousy, rivalry or without comparing the different regional cuisines! They were all representatives of the Italian cuisine.

We are now back home ready to put together all the great learnings, videos and recipes….and to start eating again!