Have you ever dreamed about staying in a beautiful medieval Tuscan town, far from the tourist crowds, spending your days exploring the area, drinking local wine and cooking local Tuscan food? I think about it all the time.
I often get Glam Italia Tour clients asking about cooking classes in Tuscany. Some just want an afternoon class, but others want a bigger experience where they get to live in a gorgeous old villa for a week, shop the local village markets and cook with the nonnas. While looking for a unique and completely special experience for my clients I discovered a wonderful week long cooking program called Tuscan Women Cook.
Two ladies from California followed their dreams (and the stories and recipes of their Italian Nonnas) and now have a cooking school in Tuscany. What is even more perfect to me is that their school is in a little town near Siena, but off the beaten track. The town, or more aptly village, is called Montefollonico.
Montefollonico sits perched on a hill between the Valdichiana and the Val d’Orcia, some of the most beautiful areas in Tuscany. The town has a palazzo and is encircled by a 13th century fortress wall. In short, it’s all just dreamy.
But not all of us can just drop tools and go do a week’s cooking class in a hilltop town in Tuscany. So the ladies who own the school put together a cookbook, called Tuscan Women Cook.
Recipes are folded around stories from the area. I love the way they tell you the recipes too. Instead of talking at you as so many cookbooks do, they talk to you. It’s this friendly, chatty tone of voice that makes you feel like you’re cooking with a friend rather than trying to understand chef language in a book.
The food photos of course are lovely, but I also love the photos of local people, and shots of the town.
The book is so fabulous that actress and Food Network host Valerie Bertinelli wrote the foreward! Not only is she of Italian descent, she learned to cook Italian food from her nonna and has an absolute passion for the cuisine. Enough of a passion that she discovered Tuscan Women Cook when she and her husband went to Montefollonico to attend the cooking school for a week!
If you want to cook some wonderful Tuscan cuisine this summer (or anytime), meals that are fresh and simple, don’t cost the earth to make and are total crowd pleasers, even if you’re just cooking for one (and you are the fabulous crowd member cooking for yourself!) you will love this book. It is available on Amazon and I have put it in my amazon store (Amazon.com/shop/CorinnaTravels) Here is a link.
You can find out more aboutt he cooking school here.I have no affiliation with them – I just love the book. I’ve had it for a couple of months now and it is a big success in or house!
Do you belong to my newsletter? Later this summer my newsletter members will be getting a free recipe from Tuscan Women Cook. If you would like to be included you can join the newsletter here.
All images in this post are from Tuscan Women Cook.
