Popolo Brisbane: Producer Evening. Fab night out!

Best night I’ve had in a long time! Making pasta, drinking wine, eating delicious foods with a fab view and great friends is my idea of a good time.

I pulled together a group of friends to head to the pasta making class when I saw it on Popolo’s Facebook. We weren’t entirely sure how it was all going to go down (were we going to make the pasta? Would we watch someone make pasta? How much cheese could we eat? Would the other people be fun?) but we booked anyway, it seemed like something fun and different to do on a Tuesday. And man were we right!

We arrived to big smiles all round, a fairly large crowd (it had sold out) and a set up which confirmed that, yup we were making pasta! We grabbed our welcome glass of wine (great start to any evening if you ask me), or beer which kept the men happy and we took our seats overlooking the Italian cheese platters. Three of them. The delicious cheese. We were supposed to be holding off eating until we had our tasting lesson but some people didn’t get the message… it took ALL of my willpower and then some to hold back. I love cheese.

Anyway, we were called up first to have a go at the pasta making! We put on our delightful (ugly but definitely necessary as we would soon learn) plastic aprons and took our places at the long table in front of the flour bowls. Popolo’s Head Chef, Paul Holden, instructed us on how to make our pasta and we began. It’s really simple would you believe? Flour, egg and a dash of olive oil. Moosh (that’s a word) it all up, roll it into a ball,  fold it over and over again and then roll that bad boy out flat! Of course if you were at home you would rest it but we were hungry and eager to continue.

The Chef taught us how to use the pasta roller. It is definitely an arduous process but good things take time, right?! We had so much fun ‘admiring’ each other’s masterpieces and rolling them out that Scott managed to drop his on the floor – ha! We still ate it, shhh – 5 second rule.

We were then taught how to make pappardelle, walnut ravoili, macaroni and bows. It was hilarious, laughing at each other’s attempts to perfect the pasta types. My ravioli was pretty good after years of gyoza making but the macaroni was average at best. Thankfully you couldn’t really stuff up the pappardelle.

Next up, we took our fresh, hand made pasta over to the Chef where he cooked it in front of us and added a sauce. Wagyu ragu for the pappardelle, bows and macaroni and fresh pesto for the ravioli. Ooooh my gosh, it was melt in your mouth delicious. The sauces were beautifully done and it was super satisfying eating pasta that we had made on our own!

Side note, our glasses were never empty during this time! Yeah, that’s a happy place right there.

We devoured our plates and made our way over to the Italian cheese tasting. Ahhhh cheesseee. We were taught where the cheese was from and how it was made.  We learnt about the varietals and the flavours with Visco Selected Fine Foods. They had me at truffle pecorino… cue drooling!  The blue was scrumptious too.

At this point appetisers started coming out. More food! Yesss! We were hanging for some arancini which was apparently finished but the lovely waiter rustled some up for us, good man that he was. The pizza (maybe margherita?) was covered in a soft and beautiful buffalo mozzzarella. It was definitely a treat yo’self kind of night.

I highly recommend getting along to the next one with a bunch of friends. Be prepared not to drive home, learn to make something delicious and share many laughs.

Can’t wait for the next one! What will in be, Popolo??