Master class with Antonio Carluccio and Celebrating 160 years of Cirio

One of my favorite cuisines is Italian food. I love pasta and pizza and I absolutely adore tomato based sauces with oregano, garlic and herbs such as basil. This sort of food is my firm favorite. I also use lots of tomatoes in all my Indian cooking, one particular brand I adore is Cirio. I buy it in bulk from the cash and carry. There is a whole range of tomatoes available in the Cirio brand, passata, plum tomatoes, chopped tomatoes, Pomodorini cherry baby tomatoes, pizza sauce and Filetti tomatoes too.

Cirio recently celebrated 160 years anniversary and I was really excited to be invited by them to an event to celebrate their 160 years of Cirio tomatoes. The event was at the good housekeeping institute and it was a cookery masterclass with Antonio Carluccio. I was super excited to meet this wonderful chef in person and also pick up some great Italian cookery tips from him too.

Antonio cooked a wonderful tomato based mussel soup with passata, muscles, white wine and herbs that my carnivore friends really enjoyed.

For the vegetarians he cooked a lovely Italian soup with tomatoes and bread called Pappa al Pomodoro. The simple flavours in the soup made using cirio tomatoes with a hint of garlic, basil, fresh toasted bread and vegetable stock was delicious. 

There were only a few ingredients in the soup but it had amazing flavours, as they say sometimes simplicity gives best results.

Meeting Antonio Carluccio and hearing about his life and his journey through the culinary world was really inspiring and was the icing on the cake. I am now an even bigger fan of his after meeting him in person.

I have come away from this class with lots of inspiration and have been sent some Cirio products. All I need to do now is brush up on my Italian vegetarian recipes and hope to feature them on my blog together with the many tomato Indian recipes I already have posted.

I made this delicious Tomato and Vegetable pasta sauce for dinner this week using Cirio Passata.

I would like to thank Cirio for inviting me to this wonderful celebration and the awesome masterclass with Antonio Carluccio and also for the products they gave me.