In the beginning of autumn in Tuscany the weather is warm and wet, the perfect climate for mushrooms to grow! The most famous are porcini, but there are so many different kinds of delicious though less celebrated mushrooms!

In this season woods are crowded with mushroom pickers who have fun in waking up very early and go searching for them… but it is not rare that they get lost themselves! I am not one of them, I prefer just to cook and eat them!  Raw, grilled, roasted, stewed…

Here I suggest a recipe to be prepared with a mix of several kinds of mushrooms, so that you can use not only porcini, which I guess are imported almost everywhere, but also other kinds available in you regions. It is called “cacciucco di funghi misti di bosco”: cacciucco is a typical Tuscan soup made with  many kinds of fish – well, this is a mushroom version!

We have to say that summer it’s already arrived. Days get longer, but the heat increases. After a long day, or even as a break from work, we need to eat in a balance, healthy and light way. One of the meals that we eat very often here in Italy during summer is Insalata Caprese. One of the simplest and most delicious of salads. It’s origin is Capri, requires only the right ingredients and the right season. This is basically a summer dish from which follow the ingredients: it should be made only with local vine-ripened tomatoes that are red, juicy and flavourful but not overly soft.

The next essential ingredient is good quality fresh, buffalo mozzarella.

Finally, you need genuine extra-virgin olive oil, the best you can afford. With a good quality fresh bread and a glass of cool or slightly chilled white wine, this makes an excellent summer lunch or, in a small portion, an ideal first course for a summer meal.

Enjoy!

From May until September many Italian weekends are spent celebrating food, art, and culture of Italy.

Sagra denotes a local fair, usually a celebration of the gifts of the earth–meaning food, as in a preparation (sagra di torta di erbe) or a raw ingredient (sagra di pesce [fish]).

Larger sagre (the plural of sagra) may feature musical bands and perhaps a competition of some sort.

Attending a sagra is a way to get a taste of Italian country life. You order food to be cooked by locals with a passion for the local cuisine, then sit at communal tables to eat.

You’ll probably need a car to attend a sagra, as most of them are held in small towns, usually in the main “piazza”. When you drive through the Italian countryside, you’ll see colourful posters posted at intersections indicating the “Sagra di ………, with the dates and times large enough to be read from a passing car. They’re in Italian, of course, but they’re pretty easy to figure out!

In Tuscany now is still very hot, but perfect weather for fruits!

Specially in Lucca we have lots of peaches, plums, pears.

You can buy them at a very low price! Sometimes I came back  home with cases of fruits, but then I realize that my family can’t eat that much! I have got to do somenthing with it.

It’s a great tradition, this time of the summer, to make many kinds of fruits in the jars: Jam,  apricot compote, or juice. My favorite preparation is peach or figs jam.

Peel the fruits, cut in regular pieces. Put into a large casserole, cupper or alluminium, with little zeste of lemon. Cook until fruit is very soft, on a very small flame. Set a part and cool up.

Put on the scale and calculate the weight. Take the 80/100 of sugar and mix with the cooked peaches. Put to boil again for 20 minutes. Make sure does not caramelized!

Put the jam into glass jars while still hot. Cover and turn up side down the jars untill cool.

It’s not necessary to tell the way you can enjoy this jam!!

Le Sagre

From May until September many Italian weekends are spent celebrating food, art, and culture of Italy.

Sagra denotes a local fair, usually a celebration of the gifts of the earth–meaning food, as in a preparation (sagra di torta di erbe) or a raw ingredient (sagra di pesce [fish]).

Larger sagre (the plural of sagra) may feature musical bands and perhaps a competition of some sort.

Attending a sagra is a way to get a taste of Italian country life. You order food to be cooked by locals with a passion for the local cuisine, then sit at communal tables to eat.

You’ll probably need a car to attend a sagra, as most of them are held in small towns, usually in the main “piazza”. When you drive through the Italian countryside, you’ll see colourful posters posted at intersections indicating the “Sagra di ………, with the dates and times large enough to be read from a passing car. They’re in Italian, of course, but they’re pretty easy to figure out!

Yesterday I brought a group of American gourmets to visit the village of Colonnata: this is a tiny and ancient village set among the marble quarries of Carrara (where the best white marble was taken for creating masterpieces like Michelangelo’s David!).

The traditional method for preparing lardo has been handed down probably since Roman times, when it was the cheap and nourishing food for quarriers. In Colonnata every family prepare their own lardo, and they all have their secret ingredients. Anyway, this is the traditional method in simple words:

Strips of lardo (the fat on the back part of the pork) are placed in a marble vat rubbed with garlic. Every layer of lardo is seasoned with salt and topped with a mix of herbs (like black pepper, rosemary, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, sage, oregano and aniseed), then another layer of lardo and so on until the vat is full. Then the vat is sealed and left in a cave (or in a fresh room with airing) for about 6 months. The result is so delicious! The lardo, thinly sliced and laid for example on warm focaccia or bread, is so smooth and tasty! If you have a chance, you should try it!

We have to say that summer it’s already arrived. Days get longer, but the heat increases. After a long day, or even as a break from work, we need to eat in a balance, healthy and light way. One of the meals that we eat very often here in Italy during summer is Insalata Caprese. One of the simplest and most delicious of salads. It’s origin is Capri, requires only the right ingredients and the right season. This is basically a summer dish from which follow the ingredients: it should be made only with local vine-ripened tomatoes that are red, juicy and flavourful but not overly soft.

The next essential ingredient is good quality fresh, buffalo mozzarella.

Finally, you need genuine extra-virgin olive oil, the best you can afford. With a good quality fresh bread and a glass of cool or slightly chilled white wine, this makes an excellent summer lunch or, in a small portion, an ideal first course for a summer meal.

Enjoy!

Today I have a good advice to refresh your senses from Summer heat! Sorbetto is a very light icecream, prepared without milk. It is very simple to realize, if you have an icecream machine, and once you have learnt how to make it, you can use your imagination to create many other flavors (strawberry, green apple and so on)! But lemon sorbetto is the most appreciated to clean your mouth after eating fish!

4 medium juicy lemons; 300 g caster sugar; 1 l of water; 3 egg whites; some Limoncello liquor (optional).

Italy produces more wine than any other country in the world, and some of the finest varieties come from Tuscany.

Bolgheri is perfect for Winelovers this town is well-known for its wine produced from the grapes from the surrounding countryside.

This town located in the county of Castagneto Carducci about 60 miles South-West of Florence, the latitude is approximately the same as Montalcino and Montepulciano. What distinguishes Bolgheri from these historically well known wine regions, is its proximity to the sea, in fact a common feature the wines possess is it’s salty flavour.

An important factor in which it is determined the high quality of Bolgheri’s wines is undoubtedly the “terroir”, a wonderful alchemy between weather, ground, tradition and culture,  besides the capacity of the producers to understand and to exploit at best these qualities.

Usually tuscan wines are made from blends of sangiovese, Cabernet, Merlot, Chianti Classico, but these wines from the Etruscan coast are taken mainly from strains and blend like Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Pinot Grigio and Pinot Noir (all French variety). Funny is in it?

The heat has finally arrived passing through spring making it almost disappear and the warm sun is already embracing the vegetables in the garden.

Like last year we have a vegetable garden (in Italian “orto”), and I’m looking forward to breed my very own salad in almost a week or so.

I’m also very proud of the fact that the garden is entirely 100% organic, which is wonderful not only for our kitchen and our cooking using season’s products, but also for the students to see not only the wonders of nature, but the delicacies of the natural and organic taste.

Cacciucco Dell’orto

Mix of vegetables, beans and cherry tomatoes bruschetta

Ingredients:

Method :