TAFE Cooking Classes: In the Adelaide City Region of South Australia

A Roman holiday is surely the tonic for any jaded South Aussie battling the mid winter blues.

But you can opt for a less expensive taste of Italian cooking, language and culture from the comfort of your own restaurant table at the legendary CIBO's in O'Connell Street. It's reputation for fine Italian fare is largely due to the efforts of this man, Salvatore Pepe.

Salvatore came to Adelaide twelve years ago. He's originally from Calabria in Southern Italy but later moved to Florence where he picked up many of his culinary skills.

When he's not here in the kitchen at Cibo's he's partnering Italian Immersion Weekends at Mount Lofty House.

“We have a nice dinner for the evening - normally a couple of courses or dessert as well. We do that Friday night then we go all day Saturday and have Italian lessons. We have lunch and dinner as well. In between the lessons there's lots of games we play in Italian. But basically we spend most of the time speaking Italian.”

And definitely eating Italian with Salvatore taking classes through his favourite dishes like the one he learned from his mother in Calabria, Chicken Casereccia.

An essential for the dish is free range chicken.

“A very nice chicken from Kangaroo Island which is been grown very old style. I haven't had a chicken so good since I was back in Calabria where I was born.”

Salvatore quickly seals the chicken pieces in a non-stick pan with a bit of extra virgin olive oil. After a slight colour change, it’s transferred to another pan with some diced tomato and sliced onions.

“Then we turn up the heat a little bit just to warm it up so when it goes in the oven it's already warm. Then we use some white wine, just a touch - about half a glass. We have some thyme, which is the only herb in this dish. Then we put in some salt.”

Finally some mushrooms, kalamata olives and capsicum and it’s into the oven for half an hour at 200 degrees and soon you have the finished dish - Chicken Casereccia.

It’s a superb and very simple Italian dish and it's just one of the recipes you can master at the Adelaide Institute of TAFE's Italian Immersion Weekends.

And if you want to go the whole hog you can book a Tuscan Experience. It's a two-week food, language and cultural binge at a villa in Tuscany.

For details on both experiences contact TAFE on 8207 8458.