How To Fall In Love 7 Times On Your Italian Cooking Tour
By Margaret
On these cooking holidays you escape to the simpler, more down-to-earth life of long ago where only the real joys matter: cooking food slowly, lovingly in a cosy group all morning, drinking good, regional wines together, savouring genuine, local dishes, admiring beauty, sharing experiences heart to heart around the table for hours with friends, and feeling at peace. In Italy you fall in love with a sweeter, slower life. You're far away from your world and all its demands.
You love the sensuality of it all. In Tuscany, Italy you inhale fresh sage, oregano, basil, lemon, wine and rose perfumes wafting around the kitchen and garden.
In Piedmont you admire a delicate asparagus flan garnished with purple wild flowers, grated black truffles and a fresh green oak leaf on a white plate.
In Sicily your taste buds go wild over roast figs with honey and orange. With Diana in Positano you use your hands to crush tomatoes for sauce, tear up fresh basil, peel skins off roasted peppers and flatten chicken breasts. Great childlike Italian fun!
It goes without saying you'll fall for Italian food and wines. In Italy people use fresh ingredients in season. Spring sees lots of artichoke, asparagus, sweet pea and seafood dishes in Venice: asparagus risotto, pasta and ragu with snails and artichokes. Fall brings forth mushrooms, game, truffles in Umbria and Emilia-Romagna: duck with vin santo, pasta with porcini mushrooms and truffles.
Wines range from classic full reds like Barolo and Brunello in Piedmont and Tuscany, to flavourful reds like Primitivo in southern Puglia. You can enjoy dessert wines from dry vin santo in Tuscany to sweet, intense Passito ones in Sicily.
You can't help falling in love with hauntingly beautiful landscapes outside your Italian kitchens. After you cook with chefs Liliana, Franco, Pietro and Esther in Piedmont’s Barolo wine country in northwest Italy, you look out over waves of gentle hills fading into the distance, spilling down in every direction in little valleys, patchwork green hills blanketed in vineyards, forests and fields full of fruit and nut trees, hills crowned with imposing medieval castles.
On a Sicily cooking tour, you'll fall in love with the art all around you. Art in every day life like pyramids of smaller and smaller jars of green and black olives and hot red sauces piled high under lights in the Palermo market. Art by ancient masters like remains of Greek temples standing battered but tall on a lonely field, staring out to sea in the golden light of sunset.
Is it any wonder you fall in love with people too, in such a relaxed, sensual environment where your heart and soul can roam free?
In the Barolo wine country in northwest Italy, my congenial group cooked together with chefs in their restaurants, explored medieval towns, and tasted fine wines with winery owners who treated us like old friends. One evening a wine maker dining with us started teasing a couple. "Stay for the wine harvest. I'll match you up with a beautiful young woman to pick grapes with, signore, and a handsome young man to pick grapes with you, signora." The couple kept shaking their heads, but the wine maker would not let up. Finally the husband stood up, "I'd like to make a toast to my beautiful wife. We've recently celebrated 38 years of marriage." Tears welled up in his wife's eyes and the table fell silent. They'd fallen in love even more than before.
At the start of another cooking tour, I thought one couple seemed a little distant. The husband had been very reluctant to go. By the end of the week, the couple was dancing and holding hands. They fell in love again.
Of course, you'll fall in love with the Italian people. I admit I’m generalizing here. Most Italians, whether shy or outgoing, have a warm, down-to-earth openness about them. You can talk to them about life, about feelings with no pretences. Although many Italians lead busy, full lives, they find time for heart-to-heart talks over food and wine. They touch you and hug you. I always feel more cherished and nurtured in Italy with men or women friends. In Italy men make me feel much more feminine and attractive than North American men do.
You could also love yourself more again. You might rediscover the person you were before you forgot who you were. The silly artist who piles on so much marzipan fruit on top of a dessert that she wins the prize for the worst, most Baroque decoration. The spontaneous child who's first up dancing as the music starts in the piazza.
So go ahead, indulge in a sensual, hedonistic cooking tour in Italy, fall in love there and bring some of that love home. You only live once!
17 Questions to Ask Yourself So You Find the Right Cooking Tour in Italy For You
1. What kind of cooking tour package suits you best?
2. If you’d like an all inclusive tour package, what kind of excursions do you want?
3. What are absolute musts for you?
4. When do you want to travel in Italy?
5. What regions in Italy do you want to explore?
6. What is your budget?
7. What kind of accommodation are you looking for?
8. How many Italian cooking lessons do you want?
9. How many people in your cooking class?
10. What level of teacher and class do you need?
11. Where is your cooking teacher from?
12. Does your cooking teacher work with an interpreter?
13. What kind of lessons do you like?
14. Where do you eat?
15. What is included in the price?
16. What is most important to you in a cooking holiday?
17. What about asking for references?
There’s a huge range of wonderful tours and classes, but only some give you the experiences you’ve always dreamed of.
How to choose from so many adventures, from north to south in Italy from three to ten days, some all inclusive packages, some with cooking and accommodation only?
First, you need to decide just what you’re looking for, so you can don't feel overwhelmed by all these delicious possibilities, so you can narrow your choices quickly.
1. What kind of Italian cooking tour package suits you best?
Cooking lessons and accommodation so your room, breakfast and big meal are taken care of? You just have to think about your lighter evening or midday meal and can decide where you want to explore. A good balance of both organized and independent travel.
Or an all inclusive tour package with Italian cooking lessons, accommodation, meals and excursions so you just sit back, never touch your wallet, let someone else make all the decisions and get totally pampered? Great for people who do lots of decision making and organizing every day and just want to get all taken care of for a change.
2. If you’d like an all inclusive cooking tour package in Italy, what kind of excursions do you want?
Is this your first time in Italy or in this particular region so you prefer sightseeing? Or are you a real foodie hungering for Italian gastronomic visits? Are you an Italian wine lover who’s always wanted to visit small and big wineries and get to know the owners who take your intimate little group around and sample a variety of wines with you? If you’d like a bit of it all, how much sightseeing and how many food and wine visits do you want?
Check the tour itinerary. Often cheaper trips offer sightseeing where you explore and shop in medieval towns and admire beautiful country panoramas. More expensive ones give you exclusive gastronomic visits where you watch artisan producers making ricotta or tour
wineries with owners who tell you all you ever wanted to know about their wines and give you special tastings.
3. What are absolute musts for you?
Check what's NOT included. Does the six day package at the lovely wine and oil estate not far from Florence look too good to be true at $1050 U.S.? If sharing an apartment with fellow food lovers, getting there on your own and having no guided excursions so you have lots of free time is fine, it's a great deal!
Is a certain amount of free time to unwind or take a siesta essential? Check the cooking tour itinerary. How much free time is there? Some offer an excursion every other day so you can relax and do your own thing, but also see a variety of art, architecture, historical places, and lovely scenery, and learn about local food and wine. Others cater to those who want to see absolutely everything that region in Italy has to offer, and offer a full excursion program every day. Some packed itineraries build in siestas and some go non-stop. Which suits you best ?
4. When do you want to travel in Italy?
Are you keen on watching the wine harvest? Gourmets swarm to Italy for the wine harvest in September and October when you have over fifty cooking tour choices so reserve early.
Would you like a quieter time when chefs and winery owners can give you more personal attention? You'll find the same choice in warm May and June and less in hot July. In steaming mid August most Italian businesses shut and city dwellers flock to the beaches where they jam together like sardines under rows of umbrellas and to the cooler mountains, so there’s even less choice in August. However, some cooking tours in Italy operate all year round.
5. What regions in Italy do you want to explore?
Do you want to be in a city or in the country? Answering these questions will reduce your choices. For example, if you love then Friuli area intrigues you, you may enjoy cooking with good home cooks at a B & B or with a chef at a castle in the Friuli wine country.
Want to explore more than one region in Italy? Some Italian cooking tour operators offer week long tours to two regions or longer ones to three regions. Like a Cooking, Wine & Walking Extravaganza in Piedmont, Cinque Terre and Tuscany. You’ll find an increasing number of variations.
6. What is your budget?
Prices for a six day cooking tour package vary from about $1300 Cdn/$1000 U.S. to $6200 Cdn/$4750 U.S. with many in the $2400 Cdn/$1800 U.S. to mid $2600 Cdn/$2000 U.S. range.
7. What kind of accommodation are you looking for in Italy?
A four or five star hotel with all the amenities you could ever want? A pretty, three star hotel with private bathrooms? A family’s villa or nicely renovated farmhouse B & B which may have private or shared bathrooms? A self-contained apartment you rent for a week? If you’re travelling in warmer seasons, do you want a pool? If you’re looking for air-conditioning, you’ll find it only in four star hotels and not in historic, family homes.
8. How many Italian cooking lessons do you want?
Do you want to focus on cooking? You’ll find cooking tours with four lessons in six days or cooking only packages. Would you like less cooking and a bigger mix of other Italian food or wine related activities?
9. How many people in your Italian cooking class?
Six or eight? You'll get to prepare the whole menu. Ten or more? You'll join the "eggplant" or "tiramisu" team and not learn how to make the other dishes. But the more the merrier! A larger class also may give you demonstration style, not hands-on lessons. Which do you prefer?
10. What level of Italian cooking teacher and class do you need?
You can savour once in a lifetime experiences with a great home cook in her villa with incredible views of the Barolo wine country hills in Piedmont. If you're a really good cook, you may prefer a restaurant chef or Italian cookbook author. Check cooking teachers' qualifications.
Ask about class level. Most classes are geared to gourmet tourists, who range from great cooks to rank beginners. If you can't stand the thought of cooking with people who can't separate eggs, private classes are worth it, especially if you're a professional level cook or chef.
11. Where is your Italian cooking teacher from?
Do you prefer a local Italian chef who presents genuine regional dishes and gives you a little peek into his everyday life in Italy, perhaps regaling you with stories about his family? Or do you prefer a well known Italian restaurant chef or owner from London or New York, who can act as a bridge between the two cultures for you and give you a taste of life with the famous?
12. Does your cooking teacher work with an interpreter?
Does matter to you if your cooking teacher speaks only Italian and teams up with a good interpreter, or speaks fluent English? Often the interpreter and the chef make a good comedy duo. If you’re learning Italian, you get the cooking tips first in Italian and then in English so you pick up more Italian. However, if you’re not comfortable with the delay of explanations via an interpreter, ask if the chef works with an interpreter or speaks good English.
13. What kind of Italian cooking lessons do you like?
Hands-on lessons where you put your hands in the flour, or demonstration style classes where you watch the chef’s expert moves and ask lots of questions? Many demonstration classes tend to be large--10 or even 20 people. Julia Childs reportedly had 40 disciples watching her in classes at the five star Hotel Cipriani in Venice’s lagoon and following her in a long snake-like line through the Rialto fish market.
14. Where do you eat on your Italian cooking tour?
Do you want to eat in a variety of local trattorias and restaurants, so you get a real flavour of different cooking styles and locales in Italy? Or do you prefer quieter meals at your home away from home, at your country villa or estate, where the chef turns into an Italian family member? Less expensive cooking tours feature most meals at home, while more expensive ones take you to more restaurants.
15. What is included in the price of your cooking tour in Italy?
Some tours charge extra for transporting you to and from the airport or railway station. Some itineraries don’t make it crystal clear how many meals are included. On some excursions you have free time to shop...and buy a light lunch. Others say “evening at leisure” which means free time to explore...and dine on your own. Some say “optional” excursions which means you pay extra.
16. What is most important to you in a cooking tour?
Lots of cooking lessons? Living with an Italian family? Unwinding in gorgeous, peaceful countryside? Lots of food and wine visits? In all likelihood, the cooking holiday you like will not have every ingredient you’re looking for. (Just like our partners in life don’t) But make sure your cooking holiday gives you the ingredients you value most.
17. What about asking for references?
If you’ve decided on the cooking tour in Italy for you, and want to find out first hand how good the itinerary is or how professional and fun the tour leader is, ask the tour operator for names and contact e-mail, fax or phone numbers for past tour members. Call them up.
Italy Cooking Tours
www.Italycookingtours.com
Tel: 1-800-557-0370 within North America or (604) 681-4074
Fax: (604) 681-4909
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