"Facciamo un pisolino," someone says; pushing away from the table. This is going to become a useful phrase during the week: Let's take a little nap.

After our siesta, a car is waiting outside to take us exploring small medieval villages in Chianti; they dot the hill sides like picturesque outposts in a fairy tale. We stop in a couple of ceramics shops and wine cellars, and wander the cobbled streets until it is time for an aperitif - a little sparkling dry spumante. By evening, upon our return, we actually have room for some leftovers.

 

I wake up in my room to golden light streaming in from the fields. Through the shuttered window I can see miles of rolling green vineyards, Inside my room, the furniture is heavy and old; the effect is light and airy, though, with tasteful prints and terra-cotta pots filled with fragrant lavender. When the family bought the farmhouse, it had been abandoned for decades; they renovated it, turning the attic, traditionally used for pigeons, into a bedroom; the basement, which once housed pigs and sheep, into an apartment.

After a simple breakfast of toast with fig jam and strong coffee, we go to work again. Today, we make several types of crostini (slices of bread with savory spreads used as appetizers), risotto with asparagus, focaccia, and a fruit torte. The focaccia pugliese, which is made with potatoes, proves to be the most difficult. The dough isn't behaving. Paola gives us a few tips about dough. Some people, she says, have cold hands, and some have warm hands. People with cold hands, she says, are better off making gnocchi than pasta. I apparently have rather cold hands, and I try to force the dough into a pliable mass. "No," says Paola, taking over for a while. "You must not become violent. You must make love to the dough."

I mention to Paola that at home I have a bread machine that makes dough. She gives me a look of horrified in credulity. "Dough," she tells me, "is alive.

You cannot use a ma chine on a live thing."

When it comes to food, the Italians avoid machines and technology as much as possible, and do indeed treat what they eat as living things, pinching vegetables to test the skin, and handling them with tender care. The secret of Italian cuisine, I am finding, is freshness. If something comes from the garden outside the house, that's best (herbs, olive oil, hazelnuts, cherries, figs, and some berries are grown at Podere Le Rose). If it's from a neighbor's garden, in season, or sold at the open-air market, that's just fine. The only processed things Italians eat seem to be olives, capers, and wine; they'd rather eat cat than open a can.

After lunch (this time accompanied by a light Vernaccia wine from nearby San Gimignano), we hike several of the footpaths that crisscross the Tuscan countryside, wandering through vineyards and villages, ending up -where else? - at a small bar for a cool aperitif in the shade. Having our hands deep in dough together has given us a feeling of camaraderie. We sip and chat as friends.

 

An older gentleman with a well-weathered face conies into the kitchen in the morning carrying sticks of oak and a

bundle of fresh sage and rosemary He starts a small fire on the grill in the kitchen, tending it carefully. While the kitchen fills with fragrant smoke, he goes out to change into a white chef's coat, hat, and elegantly tied neckerchief Alvaro Luddi, who has been a chef for thirty years at a fine restaurant outside of Florence, has come to lend Paola a hand.

All morning, with deftness and precision, Alvaro oversees our work making crostini with liver paté, ravioli, tomato bruschetta, an Italian version of shish kebabs, focaccia, salad, and a fruit salad served in a festive bowl made from a watermelon. He hovers over us, making comments in Italian - "più olio" meaning more oil; "più sale": more salt; and tranquilla, tranquilla", take it easy. That seems to sum up a good deal of his philosophy of cooking. Alvaro doesn't use recipe books - he scorns them. One must learn, he says, to sense how to cook, through experience.

He shows us how to roll out pasta dough, put it through a mechanical pasta machine (the only machine allowed), add dollops of spinach and ricotta, slice the dough in squares, fold each one in half, press the sides with a fork. Suddenly we have ravioli, which we drop into boiling water; we retrieve them a few minutes later and top them with fresh sage, potatoes, and tomatoes, then char them on the grill. Alvaro rubs pieces of bread with garlic before grilling them and serving them as bruschetta, with fresh tomatoes and olive oil on top. A master at his work, he is never quite satisfied; we, his stupefied assistants, just do our best to add the right amount of salt and olive oil to everything.

When we finally sit down to eat, with a red Chianti from the nearby village of Radda, the meal is so good and harmonious that we hardly pay attention to the individual flavors. We notice instead the feeling of well-being that settles over everyone at the table, as people begin telling stories. We float back and forth between Italian and English, between water and vino, with enough gestures for everyone to understand. I try a bruschetta. "Buono," I tell Alvaro.

He looks hurt. "Com'è, buono?" he says - what do you mean, good? "Buonissimo," I answer, adding the superlative. "Ecco" he says. That's it.

The grilled meat looks and smells so delicious that I - a steadfast vegetarian for fifteen years - eat a piece of chicken in Alvaro's honor. "You're such a wonderful chef," I say in Italian, "that you've converted me." He finally looks satisfied.

 

The next day, we are so saturated with food that we wish, for a moment, that we were at one of those spas that serve tiny portions and no-fat cuisine. We straggle in to breakfast and think about having a little nap first thing. Paola, however, is cheerful and awake, already humming around the kitchen. We don our aprons and prepare to work.

The day's menu rouses us. Little pizzas with eggplant, con melanzana. A traditional Tuscan vegetable stew. A bean dish with tomatoes. A rolled tomato-and-onion bread called rotolo a! pomodoro. A polenta cake for dessert. As we chop and roll and slice throughout the morning, it occurs to me how many little tricks I have already picked up about Italian cooking: There should be no draft when bread is rising. When making pasta or pastry make a volcano with the flour, putting the wet ingredients into the crater, mixing slowly. Bake pastries and breads on parchment paper to remove them easily. Rub the cut ends of a cu cumber together to get the acid out. Don't bother taking the skin off garlic if you're making something in which the garlic is heated - the skin melts. To chop things finer and faster than a food processor, try a mezzaluna - a half-moon-shaped knife with two handles that you use in a rocking motion.

By now, we have already become assured enough in the kitchen that we don't need to ask Paola questions about every dish. Instead of asking if we've added enough salt or olive oil, we just dip our spoons in to taste and decide for ourselves.

In the afternoon, we drive through Tuscany, past fields full of sunflowers, vines, and purple thistles, to Siena. We wander through the compact town, with its stacked medieval houses of red dish brick and views of cathedrals and squares at every turn. I sit at the edge of the Piazza del Campo, the famous sloping brick plaza encircled by a cathedral, noble houses, and open-air cafes. The Palio horse races are held twice a year here, a crush of pageantry and frenzied action. But it's serene now in the mid day sun, with nothing to do but marvel at the civilization that could have pro duced such a perfect place to sit.

 

The final day, Alvaro arrives again, in a good mood since the fishermen had the fish he wanted that morning at the market. He directs us in making a sauce for shellfish pasta, as well as a marinated bass with potatoes. We use a rosemary sprig as a brush to bathe the bass in olive oil, lemon, and white wine. On the side, we mix up a bean dish, a bread salad that is typically Tuscan (and a most creative use for slightly stale bread) - panzanel!a -and a batch of biscotti.