AACC students learned how to make pasta and sauces at a cooking demonstration by the Hotel, Culinary Arts and Tourism Institute on the Glen Burnie Town Center Campus on Dec. 1. 

Culinary students Frank Granito and Laurie Boucher led the workshop and taught attendees how to make homemade pasta, sauces and the filling for tortellini. 

“Pasta is very accessible,” Boucher, a baking and pastry arts student who graduated with a culinary arts degree in 2020, said. “Many people find that pasta is very intimidating, and it doesn’t need to be. … It’s really nothing other than flour and some type of liquid. … I would say that if anyone has an interest in making pasta, it’s accessible and they can do it.”

The event was the first pasta demonstration the program that has held. The institute will host a pizza making and cookie decorating demonstration on Dec. 16 in Humanities 218. 

“Pasta making is fun; pasta making is therapeutic,” Granito, a second-year applied science and culinary arts student, said. “And it is something you can do with the entire family: your kids, your grandkids, brothers [and] sisters. It’s a very Mediterranean communal thing.”

Some students who attended said they learned new techniques. 

“I learned the basics of pasta making,” culinary arts student Zak Engles said. “[I] learned how to shape some tortellini, learned how to make new pesto–the butternut squash pesto.”

Granito said pasta making is “a lifestyle of community, family and gathering around the table.”