Cooking & food vacations in Tuscany

Back in Montegabbione, chef Gianluca’s cooking took him from hotels around Brescia and Lake Garda to cruise ships, and 15 years running his own restaurant, so it’s fair to say he has high standards. Said one happy student, Rob Haughey: “‘It's okay’ became the motto. A ‘perfecto’ from Gianluca is like a handshake from Paul Hollywood”.

Italy only became a unified country in the 19th century, and so every region has its own distinct style of cooking. In Tuscany the cuisine tends to be very simple and rustic. Vegetables make up a big part of the diet, especially those rich in protein such as chickpeas, beans, and lentils.

Marina explains that bread is also a staple of their Tuscan cooking workshops. “In summer we have a refreshing bread salad with cucumber, tomato, basil, and onions called panzanella. And in winter we have bread soups like ribollita, which is hearty with beans and black kale, and acquacotta with parmesan, maybe an egg. These dishes really take you back to old times when people didn’t have many teeth as they couldn’t go to the dentist. They only made bread once a week so it would go stale and hard, and consequently it became difficult to eat. So using it in soups and salads was a way to avoid wasting it.”

She and Gianluca grow much of their own fruit and vegetables, organically of course: almonds, apricots, figs, walnuts, tomatoes, and peppers, are all plentiful in summer. “And we’re surrounded by small farms, so we can always buy anything extra we need from our neighbours,” adds Marina. “There are sheep farms producing cheese, others sell saffron, honey, or meat – the Chianina is the local cattle breed, wide and tall and very tasty.”

To the west, and closer to the Tuscan coast, Oli and Flo relish the quality of the ingredients they can find in the Maremmana region, from the fish and seafood caught in the Tyrrhenian Sea, to the pecorino cheese of Pienza, near Siena.

“There’s a lot of good pasta, like pappardelle, served with meat sauces like wild boar as it’s such a rural area,” says Oli. A trained sfoglino, or artisan pasta maker, Oli might take you through the basics of several different shapes such as farfalle, tagliatelle, or garganelli, perhaps stuffing ravioli with spinach and ricotta. “Filled pasta is a favorite of mine, like tortelli alla maremmana, which is essentially big ravioli. Our ingredients are very seasonal. In autumn for example we have a lot of chestnuts that we use for cakes and pasta, and porcini mushrooms are everywhere.”

Other lessons might focus on making handmade gnocchi, traditional Tuscan almond biscotti or tiramisu, or kneading the perfect dough for pizza, then cooking it in a wood-fired oven. Long story short, on these vacations you will learn a lot, and you will eat extremely well.

In Maremma, Oli and Flo introduce their guests to a local fisherman who, distressed by illegal dredging by trawlers in protected waters that was destroying marine life, took matters into his own hands. He began dropping large blocks of marble embedded with hooks into the sea to damage the trawlers’ huge nets. The initiative was so successful at improving marine biodiversity in this way that dolphins have now started coming closer to the coast to feed. These marble blocks, carved by sculptors, have become an underwater art gallery popular with divers. You can spend a day with the fisherman to learn about his efforts, help him haul in his own nets, and enjoy a freshly cooked lunch on the boat, your visit contributing financially to this fantastic scheme.

“We believe connecting people with food and where it comes from is one of most powerful things you can do with cooking,” says Oli. “Italy is great for that because it has such a strong food culture. Food bonds communities here, and it’s healthy. And there are lots of producers here thinking sustainably.”

When not rolling out the pasta or chopping up the veg, you’ll be out and about on day trips carefully arranged by your hosts with local producers, giving you a fascinating insight into where the ingredients you’re using originate. These are small businesses passionate about making the food industry more sustainable, leading the way with innovative techniques, and in the case of Paolo the fisherman, making a nuisance of themselves in the best possible way.

Renewable energy is a big thing. One day could take you to an olive oil factory where the stones are burned for electricity, another might take you to a beer brewer using geothermal energy, or a dairy farm churning out milky buffalo mozzarella and artisan ice cream, where the waste from the buffalos is harnessed to power the machinery. You could also take a tour of a seaside rice farm prior to a lesson in whipping up a risotto, or head out on a truffle-hunting expedition with a farmer.