How to get forearms like your Italian Grandmother

Cooking with Tate

Buongiorno! If you follow me on snapchat, it is no suprise that I love cooking. I think of it as art, in its most natural form. Winter break gave me the opportunity to learn more and explore. On New Years eve, I spent the day cooking with my uncle. We made handmade pasta, sauce, and some awesome tiramisu.

For the pasta, we whisked together 2 cups of flour and about 2-3 pinches of salt. We made the high well of flour and cracked 3 eggs in the well. These eggs weren't regular eggs, they were large magical eggs. Because 8 of the 12 eggs in the carten had 2 yokes. I had no clue chickens could have twins.

Step-by-Step instructions for Italian Grandma Forearms!

Step one: Start whisking the eggs and little by little incorporate the walls of flour with the eggs to make it a dough. Keep whisking until premature dough starts balling up together.

Step two: If you want the arms of your italian grandmother you’ll need to get down and dirty. Your nonna didn’t raise no wimp. This is the kneading process and kneading takes a while. Use flour to help keep the premature dough non-sticky. Knead away until you can see the veins of your hands and arms pumping. Fun fact about your nonna, she can lift more than you, bro…

Step three: You are nowhere near done kneading so keep going until the dough is no longer premature and smooth. You should be able to play a little futbol because the dough will be smooth and dense with no more air molecules stuck in it.

Step four: My personal favorite and most important step is wrap it before you tap it. Always be sure to wrap your balls, wrapping them gently in a dish cloth is best. Let them sit before you tap and roll them out with the rolling pin. This is your time to let those popping veins take a break for about an hour or so depending if you put it in the refrigerator. Ima be for real, we let it sit for an hour because we were hungry.

Step five: Pound and roll out the dough and cut it in half. Keep rolling until you feel the burn nonna felt cooking for the whole family back in Modena. If you have a machine, feed it through the pasta thinner-outer. Thin until your desired thickness.

Step six: Up next, we’re shaping them noodles. You like it thin, make it the spaghetti. You like it thick, make the fettuccine. This is your pasta, so get creative and have fun.

Step seven: I say vaffanculo to this step because it requires patiences. Though patience is important because you shall not rush the process unless you happen to get hangry like me. Hang up your pasta on a pasta drier. What, you don’t have one? Neither do I. So clean off a coat hanger or two and use them to dry the pasta. Wait till the pasta naturally starts to fall then its ready to cook.From here the process it simple. Boil the water and cook the pasta. At his point, the pasta will only take 3-4 minutes to cook because its handmade, light, and dry.

Can you tell whos arm is most like an Italian Grandmothers?

That was just the first part of workout. We will now move onto part two. Let’s get saucy, my friends. I can not tell you everything that goes in the sauce. Just know that you can use whatever type of sauce you’d like. Make it tomato sauce,marinara, alfredo, maybe a pesto, anything. Add a little bit of this and a little bit of that whatever your family likes to add. But you gotta keep stirring. Get those veins back to pumping.

For our final work out we cook up a simple tiramisu. This one is the most tiring. You got to gather all your ingredients, mascarpone cheese, heavy whipping cream, eggs, sugar, cocoa powder or some type of coffee powder.

Step one: Over boiling water in a separate bowl my uncle had me initiated into family cooking by having me whisk the egg yolks and sugar for ten minutes. Everytime it looked like I was slowing down, he’d look over and tell me not to. I think if I had only ten minutes to live I’d spend it whisking eggs and sugar for a tiramisu. This was worse than watching pasta dry on a hanger.

Step two: We mixed all the mascarpone and whipping cream together with some sugar.

Step three: After, we had to slowly fold the thick custard like egg yolks with the mascarpone and cream mixture. Folding has to be done slowly and a little bit at a time. This is really working the forearm in a steady way. Make sure to take the time to perfect your technique in the forearm. If the veins aren’t pumping, you’re not doing it right.

Step four: Finally we lined our dish with lady fingers, and pored the tiramisu in the dish layer lady fingers until we got to the top. Lastly, we dusted the top with cocoa powder. Let it refrigerate for a while until it is nice a cooled down. Then enjoy and dig in with whatever strength you have left in those forearms.

Bon Appé-Tate!

I hope you enjoyed this semi-tutorial on how to get forearms like your nonna. If you ever come across an italian granny I suggest to be on her good side, or whatever side has the smaller forearm.

Pasta Dough:

• Flour- 2 cups

• Salt- 2 pinches

• Eggs- 3

• Don’t forget the love

Sauce (not all ingredients were listed)

• Everybody likes it different so you do you

• Don’t forget the love

Tiramisu

• Egg whites- 3

• Sugar- 2 tsp (I think)

• Mascarpone cheese- whatever looks like half the tub

• Heavy whipping cream

• Coffee powder or cocoa powder

• Lady fingers (not actual fingers)

• Don’t forget the love