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Giulani? Politics? Forget It.
Give Me a Week of Cooking in Tuscany!

by Todd S. Purdum
New York Times, January 5, 1994

Special to the New York Times

SAN DONATO IN FRANZANO, Italy – The bulging waistline is a notorious side effect of time spent along the manic smorgasbord of political campaigns. So it could have been folly to seek relief from the hearburn of covering the New York City mayoral election by retreating to cooking school in Italy, where long knives had a different meaning but eating and drinking produced equally predictable results.

Nevertheless, I began plotting just such an escape last October, too tired to think hard, yet awake enough to know I'd crave a change of venue after Election Day. A solo vacation loomed as lonely, as organized tours, cruises or trips repelled. As I pondered how to make a week of self-indulgence feel like self-improvement, inspiration dawned.

Cooking and eating have been favorite pastimes since my childhood in the care of quintessential Midwestern homecooks, and I'd fallen in love with Tuscany on an earlier family visit. A look at the bible of culinary education, the Shaw "Guide to Cooking Schools," disclosed that two of the big mammas of Italian cuisine, Lorenza de' Medici and Marcella Hazan, had closed up shop for the season.

Then my eye fell on a more modest entry, La Cucina al Focolare (Cooking by the Fireside), a weeklong spring and fall program conducted in a converted 15th-century friary in the Vallombrosa Valley outside Florence by Silvia and Roberto Pincitore, who have lovingly restored what was once her family's hilltop farm into a cozy resort. I called a toll-free number in Boulder, Colo. where Peggy Markel, a former macrobiotic cook and all-around Italophile who runs the program from the States, was immediately helpful and sent a brochure. I mailed back the deposit and counted the hours.

Yes, I gained weight – about seven pounds. But in six fat and happy November days, two more important things became clear: Everything tastes better in Italy, and everything sounds better in Italian, even in the sometimes mangled mix of Italian and English that was the lingua franca of nine American novitiates and their tutors.

As she grappled to explain the earthy serendipity that is the essence of Tuscan cooking. Signora Pincitore often seized on a literal translation of the Italian word for imagination, the quality she extolled in combining ingredients and courses.

"Allora," she would say – the wonderful temporizing preface that means "then," but doubles as "well" and "so" and "um" – "Allora, it's, ah, up your fantasy!"

Sublime Joys

That became the rallying cry of a diverse group, including an architect, computer experts, an engineering analyst, an interior designer and an editor, who ranged in age from 30-something to just over 70. All of us had gathered to learn how to make – and just as important it turned out, to eat – Italian food the way Italians do (at about $2,000 for the week, including meals, lodging and excursions). -- [NOTE: for current prices, please see Tuscany page.]

The joys of the Tuscan landscape and table are at once humble and sublime: from the undulant brown hills that gave burnt sienna its name to the fog that shrouds a single valley in mist while all its neighbors bask in sun; from the soft, tangy crumble of a wedge of peccorino cheese athwart a slice of fennel salami to the unexpected union of a fizzy new Chianti and fresh roasted chestnuts for dessert.

From the moment Ms. Markel, a native Alabamian whose Southern hospitality has not diminished, met my Àlitalia train from the Rome airport in Florence on a drizzly Sunday morning, I sensed I had made the right choice. Minutes later, as we drove through olive groves and vineyards to the Pincitores' Fattoria degli Usignoli (Farm of the Nightingales), that conviction strengthened. When I sat down to lunch with my new classmates in the converted wine cellar that serves as the dining room, I knew I was home.

First came a plate of typical Tuscan antipasti – roasted yellow peppers, mozzarella and tomatoes, a grilled porcini mushroom (then just finishing its season) – followed by gnocchi, their bumblebee fuselages coated in a silken sauce of gorgonzola and asparagus. Next, slivers of rare steak grilled over a wood fire and nestled in a wreath of peppery arugula. And finally, the chestnuts and the fattoria's own six-week-old wine. And that was just lunch.

So began a cycle of observation, creation and consumption of the work of our teacher and resident chef, Fortunato Domenici, a gentle bear of a man with a voice like a pumice stone and the ready spirit of a fry-cook, whose instructions were translated (roughly) by Signora Pincitore and Ms. Markel. Our morning sessions began after breakfasts of ambrosial espresso and steamed milk and lasted about four hours, till lunch with our work as the centerpiece.

After a nap or a walk up the hill to a quaint cemetery, afternoon sessions covered lighter topics like Italian culinary terms, table settings and napkin-folding, under the droll tutelage of Aldo Settembrini, the resort's young maitre d'hôtel, who had spent a few months at Le Cirque in New York and liked to make bedroom eyes at the women and burst into ribald parodies of "That's Amore," as he served grappa at the end of a meal.

By 8 o'clock each night, we would gather again for aperitifs, a leisurely four-course dinner and rambling discussions that embraced Fellini films and organic markets in Colorado. With a self-consciousness that diminished daily, we oohed and aahed and exchanged happily guilty meditations on our good fortuna, and la dolce vita.

If It's Wednesday, It's Pizza

Two whole days were reserved for excursions, one to the markets and trattorias of Florence and the other to the nearby hill towns of Siena, San Gimignano (with its medieval skyscraper towers), and Monteriggioni, a tiny walled village. In the minibus, we learned that even Italian junk food can be astonishing: On the way back from Florence, our thoughtful driver ran into a convenience store and emerged with handfuls of sophisticated snack cakes – orange-scented, chocolate-covered, curaçao-laced twists on the Twinkie – that woke us up enough to let us eat again.

The classes themselves were a study in controlled chaos, with Signor Domenici and his assistants coolly working wonders while we, in aprons stenciled with the school logo, lobbed questions thick and fast. Monday was devoted to antipasti; Wednesday to pasta, pizza and soups; Thursday to meat courses and desserts.

Sometimes we gathered by the giant stove in the restaurant's modern kitchen; at others, we clustered around the open heart of a wood-fired rotisseries in the dining room. But with the exception of folling and cutting gnocchi and ravioli, and shaping and baking paper-think pizzas in the brick over, there was much more watching and eating than doing, and even a middling kitchen hand like me was sometimes frustrated not to be given more actual work.

Occasionally, it seemed that too many cooks really might spoil the broth, as we jockeyed to get a better view of browning veal shanks or simmering risotto, or asked about unfamiliar ingredients or directions for recipes that were read aloud but not handed out (for reasons that became clear later). Indeed the week sometimes boiled down to a blend of summer camp and group therapy, as nine egos, ids and agendas blended or clashed in close quarters.

Picnic Pleasures

Still, there was plenty of time for quiet reading, and the lack of rigid structure or discipline was among the week's greatest charms. Signor Domenici was no Cordon Bleu martinet. He never scolded anyone for a tough frittata or leaden biscotti, and because we did not unduly fuss over the food, our appetites were always good and it tasted marvelous.

Perhaps the pleasantest meal was the least formal: a picnic in the cantina where the Chianti was aged, in front of a roaring fire. We toasted saltless bread, smeared it with whole peeled cloves of garlic until they half melted, drizzled viscous green oilve oil over the bruschetta and sprinkled it with salt. Four or five kinds of prusciutto, including one made from wild boar, cheese and raw vegetables rounded out the feast.

Now, when people ask what the adventure taught me, my stock answer is "To go to Balducci's." What I mean is that Tuscan cooking is so basic that the quality of the ingredients – the olives and oil, the cheese, the artichokes,the meats – is vital, because there are no heavy sauces or lengthy stewing to mask inferior goods. I also learned that, the views of my health-conscious colleagues notwithstanding, there is nothing like a generous puddle of olive oil to conduct the aromas of garlic and onions and herbs through every spoonful of a simple tomato sauce, without leaving it the least bit greasy.

There were limits. I doubt I'll ever feel up to emulating Signor Domenici's adroit wrestling of three or four forbidding varieties of squid and octopus into a delicious cold seafood salad. Commercial American eggs and sugar don't taste the same as their Tuscan counterparts in tiramisu, and expensive imported Chianti and oilive oil don't have half the unpretentious charm of the fattoria's house labels.

Spiritual Lessons

Still, I have found it surprisingly easy to duplicate the course's recipes at home, with some help from the well-thumbed books of Mrs. Hazan and Mrs. De' Medici. And while I can't replicate the precious family heirlooms Signora Pincitore laid out in festive table settings one afternoon, her sense of style rubbed off enough to enable me to turn out a plate of mixed antipasti that looks as lovely as any in all but the fanciest New York restaurants.

The most enduring lessons have been spiritual, memories of a time and a culture where people work to live, not vice versa. After days of heavy eating, and sodden compromises with one another's shopping and museum-hopping desires as we chased around Florence in a downpour on the final Friday, we all seemed ready for the course to end.

Yet, back in the warmth of the dining room that night, as Signor Domenici grought out plate after plate for our gala graduation dinner, we grew sentimental. One by one, Signora Pincitore called us to the fireplace to receive the final treat: a portfolio of peacock green and purple Florentine paper, bound with buckram and containing three dozen-odd recipes on parchment paper to take home. In an instant, we understood why they had been guarded all week.

But later, in my room, as I untied the cloth ribbon that sealed the folder and perused its contents, I was reminded again how hard it would be to translate the experience when I returned home. At least one recipe, for bistecca alla Florentine (Florentine steak) was decidedly inscrutable. It called for "young bovine meat, taken from a hind part of the back of the animal, which does not go further than the three ribs on the back, the rib part is called chops and can be used until the seventh rib."

For an instant, I was irked at such a useless prize. But then I realized the secrets had all been, and would remain, "up my fantasy," and that this gentle mystery had given me the perfect excuse to return.

Todd S. Purdum

© Copyright 1994, The New York Times