When I met Luisa for the first time, I was going to teach her how to make pici. Then I discovered who she was, she told me she had an agriturismo in Val d'Orcia and that she makes pici daily for about forty people. Then, I saw her at work,…
Summer meals are by nature effortless and straightforward. When the season is colder, a grey sky matching a monotonous drizzling rain, I take time to roast pumpkin wedges with rosemary and spices until caramelized. I braise beef shank with wine and tomato sauce until the meat is so tender that…
Saturday evening eating out in Mensanello, our neighbouring farm, is a treat. You get to eat honest food, made with their home-grown ingredients, surrounded by fields of golden wheat. As comforting as eating at home, without the hassle of dishes to wash. Among a wooden board loaded with ripe melon…
I slept for two nights in a single bed in a tiny white room while visiting Tommaso’s family in Puglia. I could hear him sleeping, breathing heavily just twenty centimetres far from my bed. Yet, finding myself in a single bed, carefully made with freshly laundered linen, made me feel…
I was sitting outside, wearing an old swimming suit and large sunglasses, lazily bathing in the sun with a notebook and a pen in my hands. My intention was to write, I had a free Sunday afternoon and a few stories and recipes queueing, waiting to be told. My skin…
For years Mensanello has been just a nearby working Tuscan farm. My grandmother has aways referred to the Fattore and Fattoressa, the farm manager and his wife, with enormous respect. Mum used to buy fresh eggs from the Fattoressa, we used to go there on a Sunday to mass. There was a…
I have always lived in the countryside, in the same house where grandma and dad were born, but for years the countryside was little more than a well-kept garden, an olive tree orchard and a hedgerow of blackberries at the end of summer. My parents belong to that generation, grown…
April gave us a foretaste of the good weather, with clear days, warm temperatures and a fragrant air soaked with the smell of flowers. I walked a lot, on the Francigena and in the woods, with an organized group and just with my family. I needed to shake off the…