When the long week without company or plans stretched in front of me on Sunday, I thought: “why don’t I try to find a cooking class to take during the week? I’ll bet there are one-day classes somewhere in Tuscany or Umbria.” And sure enough, I found one just south of Siena (not too far away – Tuscany’s a big state) that I could take on Thursday.
Gina Stipo is an ex-pat who quit her day job some years ago to follow her love – cooking. She took training, worked the “chairs” and now has a nice cooking school that seems to keep a roof over her head and doesn’t require her to work restaurant hours. Check it out: www.ecoolacucina.com This class was conducted in a 13th century flour mill turned into kitchen and bunkhouse for the owner’s guests.
On arrival I met the other three students – a recently engaged couple and the mother-in-law to be from Toronto. All delightful, we soon developed any easy comaradarie that, under Gina’s tutelage, produced a wonderful “pranzo” of battered and fried sage leaves and zucchini flowers, goat cheese-stuffed zucchini flowers; we-made pasta with a simple tomato-basil sauce; herb-rubbed and roasted rabbit with romano beans steamed with tarragon (Siena is about the only place in Italy that uses tarragon, per Gina) and an apricot crostata – a short pastry crust with apricot jam, apricots and a lattice top. Gina served nice Tuscan wines generously.
It was really good and I learned a lot. Often I hesitate to take classes because they’re too “dumbed down.” While Gina could have skipped the discussion of what rosemary and sage were (after all, we’ve all listened to Simon and Garfunkle), there was plenty for this high-opinion-of-himself cook to learn.
Suitably inspired, I decided to try a different route home from which I’d come because it would take me past the wonderful produce market in Monterchi that Stan and I had visited the week before. I’d decided that I wasn’t up to driving back over the hill to Cortona for the wine tasting dinner (45 min. each way). So tonight, it’s a simple (?) supper of saute’d porcinis, a salad, the remains of a spinach-onion fritatta I made earlier and “fragiolini di bosco” with biscotti. These tiny strawberries are sold in the States as “fraise du bois” which is simply the same thing in French. They are fabulous – very sweet and slightly crunchy because the seed-flesh ratio is high. if you see any at Berkeley Bowl or wherever, buy them.
I think it’s time to “faccio la doccia” — doesn’t that sound nicer than “I take a shower”? And get cooking.
