SAVORING UMBRIA & TUSCANY

2010 Tour Schedule: We will not be offering any cooking tours to Italy in 2010. We'll post the schedule for future years as soon as tour dates are determined.

What could be better than a day in Tuscany and Umbria, cooking with local chefs, visiting wineries, exploring food markets, and dining at fabulous restaurants? Not much--except a week in Tuscany and Umbria doing just that: cooking, eating, exploring, experiencing the cuisine of this incredibly beautiful part of Italy.

Our week-long cooking tour of Umbria and Tuscany will provide you full immersion in the local food culture. We'll stay at a luxury four-star hotel in the medieval town of Spoleto, and from there we'll take day trips aboard our private bus to Norcia, Spello, Cortona, Montepulciano, and other classic hill towns in central Italy, where we'll enjoy cooking lessons, wine tastings, sumptuous regional dinners, and more.

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THE UMBRIAN KITCHEN Umbria uses the foods her land offers skillfully and ingeniously, without pretense. The Umbrians will be the first to tell you that theirs is a peasant cuisine, one that remains tied to its pastoral roots, and they keep things simple more out of necessity than out of rigor or philosophy. Olive oil, golden and delicate, laces almost every dish. Bread is baked without salt, as in Tuscany. Pork, king of the Umbrian table, is at its best in Norcia, a town so renowned for its butchers that the Italian word for pork butcher is norcino. Every scrap of the pig is put to good use, and specialties like Guanciale (the salted and cured meat from the pig's cheek) are tossed into pasta sauces and pots of fava beans or peas. Sheep’s milk cheese, both fresh and aged, delivers pungent flavor to soups, pastas and breads, and the precious black truffles of Spoleto and Norcia—nubby, warty and deeply aromatic—are incorporated in some of the region’s most glorious preparations. Tiny lentils from the town of Castelluccio are among the region's prized offerings, cooked into hearty soups, tossed with fresh pasta, or served as a robust accompaniment to rich meat dishes. Classic Umbrian wines include Orvieto, Torgiano, Grechetto, and Montefalco Sagrantino--all of which we will savor during wine tastings and dinners in Umbria.

THE TUSCAN KITCHEN Tuscany's food is much like Tuscany's landscape: clean, sober, and soothingly simple. Building their characteristic dishes on a savvy interplay of vegetables, beans, saltless bread, and fruity olive oil, Tuscans are masters at the art of understatement; their favorite aromatics (thyme, rosemary, and fennel) are used judiciously, never squandered or wasted. Sharp sheep's milk cheese from artisanal dairies lends saltiness and pungency to pastas, savory pies, and salads, and robust grains like farro (emmer wheat) add bulk to soups. Tuscans, self-proclaimed lovers of rice, cook risotto with cuttlefish ink, with squab, or with chicken giblets, and often add a handful of rice to vegetable soups. Ravioli and tortelli, the region's classic stuffed pastas, are filled with ricotta or potatoes and pancetta, then napped with butter and sage, tomato sauce, or a meat ragù. Along the coast, fish and seafood play a pivotal role; scorpionfish, monkfish, mullet, and other rock fish are tossed into the pot to create a thick, tomato-laced soup called cacciucco; the trick is using as many varieties of fish as possible, and puréeing the fish (heads, bones, and all) right into the broth. A special breed of cattle known as Chianina provides succulent meat for the grill, and the wild boar that roams the Tuscan woods is transformed into succulent sweet-and-sour stews and rich, rosy hams. Dessert, always more impressive on celebratory days, ranges from a dome-shaped cake called zuccotto to a flatbread studded with grapes, baked since the days of the Etruscans. Tuscany's wines are famous across the world; the most renowned are Brunello di Montalcino, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Chianti, Carmignano, Vin Santo, Vernaccia di San Gimignano, and the new class of Super Tuscan wines. We will enjoy a tasting of these wines during our Tuscan culinary adventure.

To reserve, call 917-602-1519 or email us.