Fill the Ravioli, Cut the Fettuccine, Whip the Tiramisù

Three hours in a cooking lab on Via delle Zite, five minutes on foot from the Duomo metro stop, and you leave having made two shapes of pasta, two sauces and a dessert.

The tiramisù comes first, because it needs to sit. You separate the eggs, beat the yolks with sugar until they pale, fold in the mascarpone, and soak the savoiardi in coffee for exactly as long as your host tells you and not a second more. Then the dough: flour, eggs, a fork, and the moment where it stops being sticky and starts being elastic. Half of it becomes ravioli, sealed by hand, which is the fiddly part. The rest gets rolled, floured and cut into fettuccine.

While the pasta rests you make the sauces. One is San Marzano tomato with basil torn rather than chopped. The other is a cream sauce the class calls Alfredo, which will surprise anyone who knows that the original Roman version was butter and Parmigiano and nothing else.

Your host cooks alongside the explanation: which flour, why the eggs are room temperature, what changes between a Sunday sauce and a weekday one, and why in Southern Italian households the person who makes the pasta is usually the person who decides everything else.

Then you sit down and eat what you made, with a drink included, alcoholic or not. You leave with the recipes, a certificate with your name on it, and a hat and apron. Up to twenty-five people per class; instruction runs in English, Italian, French and Spanish.