LOTE

Year 10 Italian: Masterchef Italia

On Wednesday 3 May, the Year 10 Italian class participated in an Incursion with ex-Masterchef contestant, Pia Gava. Guided by Pia, students prepared a dish of cavatelli pasta with zucchini, garlic, olive oil and pangrattato, which, as Pia explained, is a flavoured breadcrumb that was traditionally used in Italian cooking to give flavour to dishes when parmesan cheese was not available. Prior to the lesson, students had learnt about the cultural significance of the dish to Italian cuisine.

The following day, students were able to reflect on the activity and how it had developed their understanding of Italian language and culture that they have studied throughout the course.

Yesterday, I really enjoyed the cooking task. We got to practice our Italian that we learnt in class in the kitchen. We also got to learn a bit about italian tradition and culture. Pia Gava taught us how to make an easy and authentic Italian dish from scratch. I really liked doing a practical task! -  Mia

Yesterday we made cavatelli with Pia Gava. It was an interactive and educational session. It was a fun experience to cook a traditional Italian dish and we also got a backstory on the origin of cavatelli. We learnt cooking techniques and we enjoyed making and rolling the dough. - Christmas and Tling

Yesterday, we had the pleasure of being taught how to cook cavatelli, a traditional Italian pasta by Pia Gava, a MasterChef participant. She taught us about the origin of pasta and how it was traditionally made and eaten in Italy. We were then given the opportunity to make the pasta with traditional pasta board and were even able to eat it !! Overall we learned so much about pasta and how to make it and Italian techniques. – Tam and Hadassah

Yesterday, we learnt about the italian culture and how the dish was poor mans dish but it was very simple to make. Pia Gava came to teach us how to make cavatelli. In groups of two, we first prepared the pasta dough by adding water into the flour and mixing and kneading the dough. – Silvana, Sujitha, Sky

We participated in a guided cooking lesson with Pia Gava, who is an ex-MasterChef contestant. She even made it to the finals. We made an authentic Italian dish called cavatelli. This pasta was small in shape and served with butter, zucchini and lemon zest. It was an educational experience as it was most of our first time rolling and making pasta from scratch. She taught us some little tricks like only adding salt to boiling water and adding lemon zest for flavour to make cooking a better experience for the future. – Minahil and Aliya

Yesterday, in pairs we made an italian pasta dish called cavatelli. This cooking session was with led by one of the 2017 Masterchef finalist contestants, Pia Gava. We were given an insight about Italy's past history on food and specifc food items such as pasta/cavatelli. I was very interested and enjoyed learning how to make pasta from scratch using the gnocchi boards. The cavateli we made used a range of ingredients which included zucchini (zucchine), butter (burro) and lemon zest (limone). - Aaliya