Kathy & I have always enjoyed the fact that much of the food on cruise ships is actually made on board. Most of the breads, sauces, ice cream & gelato are made on board. Some of the pasta is also made in-house, but generally only in the specialty restaurants. The sheer volume of pasta needed to serve hundreds or thousands of dishes does not lend itself to in-house preparation.
Celebrity cruise ships have a specialty restaurant called Tuscan Grille, which is essentially an Italian-themed steakhouse. It’s a long way from Tuscany, but is appropriately decorated, and a lot of the menu items are Tuscany influenced. We especially look forward to the artisan breads, yummy olive oil and aged balsamic vinegars. And the cheese! Sigh…. 🙂 There is nothing like the peppery taste of a good olive oil. And while you can’t get Pici Pasta there, what they do make in house is pretty darned good!
The same morning as our sushi making demonstration, there was a pasta making demonstration. They were timed so that we could easily leave one and go to the next, getting there in plenty of time for a front row seat. And there was no plexiglass to blur our view and cause reflections, so I was able to get some pretty decent photos.
Chef Michael walked us through a very basic pasta dough recipe, then handed the dough off to his assistant Glenn, to run it through the fancy, $30,000 German pasta machine, pressing out spaghetti and rigatoni. Just a little more robust than a home pasta maker! Once again, we were not able to sample the output, but as it turned out we were scheduled to have dinner there that evening, so we made a point of trying out several of the pasta offerings. They were quite good!
For anyone who didn’t get the musical reference in the title:
Now that was interesting and I bet interesting to hear him talk about it. I’ll speak for myself but a $30,000 pasta machine is not on my list. I can make several visits to Canninos with that kind of cash and no cleanup necessary.
I’m guessing my friend Jeff has a pretty schfancy pasta maker, and I am looking forward to his comment. But yes, one of the things I learned long ago is to let the experts do the expert stuff. I may have already told you this, but the biggest lesson I got out of a canvas printing class years ago is to let someone else do the printing. The same kinda goes with pasta!
I’ve always had this romantic notion of making my own pasta. Not sure if I’ll act on it but every now and then it’s awakened, like now. 🙂
Pasta la Vista
Hey, why not try? Worst that happens is you open a box! 😉