A Special In Depth Review: My Personal Cooking Week Experience

Podere Le Rose: A Paradise for Palate and SouI

Picture yourself cooking in the big kitchen of a beautifully renovated, 13th century farmhouse on a Tuscan hilltop. You gaze out the window at the terraced hills of olive groves, vineyards and rustic gardens in a vast, peacefui valley. At the kitchen table you chop fresh sage, oregano and parsley, all from the herb garden below the window.

You blend chicken livers, fried veal, white wine, capers and lemon juice into a delicious creani to spread on littie pieces of toast for appetizers. In the cross breeze created by the open windows herb, lemon and wine perfumes waft through the whole room.

In June I spent six days living, cooking and eating with Paola de Mari di Altamura and her father, Luigi, in their family home, "Podere Le Rose" in Poggio San Polo, a hamlet of 25 people, south of Florence. A tranquil paradise far from the world.

Paola and her sister, Simonetta, feisty entrepreneurs in their late 30's, run the cooking school as well as a language school in Florence. "What do you do?" I asked Luigi. With a big smile, he replied, "I help out and I eat." What a wonderfui retirement!

Their rambling house accomodates six guests. My attic room thrilled me: a terracotta tiled ceiling supported by thick wood beams, a terracotta floor and white walls with lots of pictures. There were shelves filled with books and ledges lined with dolls and an old gramophone.

Every morning I awoke to the music of swallows swooping from their nests under the roof and threw open the wooden shutters to admire the sturrning vista. I joined Steve from New York and Keiko from Tokyo for a breakfast of espresso coffee with milk, tea, cake and fresh bread with jam.

Steve spoke only English. Keiko spoke some Italian and even less English. Luigi spoke only Italian. Luckily Paola and I spoke both languages and interpreted for the others. Friendly, knowledgeable Paola gave all our cooking lessons in fluent English and Italian. If you want to cook and eat Italian style and improve your Italian in a lovely, peacefui refuge, Podere Le Rose is perfect!

Following the very patient Paola's directions, we worked together every morning to create splendid four course meals: appetizers, a pasta plate, a main plate and a dessert. It was hands-on; we chopped, sliced, blended, kneaded, rolled, stirred, layered, poured. à and ate!

At lunch times we gathered around the big table in the kitchen, with Luigi, our papa, at the head and sampled wine from different regions of Italy. Luigi, a gracious, humorous, cultivated, down-to-earth gentleman, made us feel part of a warm family circle.

"How did you start the cooking and language schools?" I asked Luigi over one of our dinners. "Oh, I have a daughter with a thousand ideas," he answered, smiling fondly at Paola.

Steve, a 40ish, sweet, wholesome fellow, treated me like his sister back home, teasing and poking me, snatching spoonfuls of my desserts and taking sips of my coffee. Quiet Keiko, 28, and I, 44, found that despite our language barrier, we were kindred souls. We both adored good food, always appeared early for meals and loved wine which we kept pouring for each other.

My most memorable cooking experiences? Too numerous to list! One day Alvaro Luddi, a retired Tuscan chef, showed us how to make bruschetta appetizers over a wood burning fire in the kitchen hearth. We toasted small pieces of bread over the fire, rubbed garlic on both sides and spread tomatoes with fresh basil, olive oil and salt on top. Simple but delicious.

To make fresh pasta, we plunged our hands into a mountain of flour and egg yolks on a wooden board and rolled it out by hand and machine. Then we mixed freshly grated nutmeg with spinach and ricotta, stuffed the ravioli squares, boiled them and poured melted butter and fresh sage sauce on top. Delicate and yummy!

Because of the hot weather and Steve's vegetarian diet, we cooked lighter dishes for many main courses. Zucchini stuffed with tuna, onion and breadcrumbs, seasoned with basil, nutmeg and parmesan cheese and topped with tomato sauce. Tuscan panzanella bread salad with fresh basil, raw onion and tomatoes. Eggplant parmesan with layers of eggplant, tomato sauce, and mozzarella and parmesan cheeses.

One day we marinated and simmered small pieces of chicken slowly, in lots of white wine, lemon juice, herbs, salt, pepper and olive oil. Some of the best chicken I have ever tasted! Mmmm!

If you don't have a sweet tooth, you'll develop one! Our desserts were absolutely divine. A lemon and almond cake. A pink tiramisu with huckleberries, blackberries, cherries, blueberries and raspberries. Almond biscuits to dip in vin santo dessert wine. A semifreddo-ladyfiger biscuits soaked in coffee with a marscapone, egg, sugar, and coffee mixture poured on top. We could hardly wait the six hours while it set in the fridge. We made cream and vanilla ice creams too.

After lunch I took a siesta or wandered in the garden to gaze in awe at the panorama. I smelled fragrant lavender bushes, jasmin flowers from the neighbour's tree and red, yellow and pink roses. At the herb garden I rubbed the rosemary, basil. oregano, sage, peppermint, and marjoram leaves between my fingers and inhaled the fresh aromas. Sauntering down the terraces of olive trees, deliberately left rustic, through wild grass and red poppies, tall dandelions, white daisies and other white, purple and yellow wild flowers, I passed cherry, pear and fig trees.

One afternoon Luigi and Paola drove us around their Chianti countryside stopping to stroll in Raddi and Castellina, where we visited a wine cellar, ceramic store and coffee bar. Another day we explored Siena with students studying Italian at our family's language school. Sometimes I didn't feel like leaving the property aiid soaked up all the tranquillity on a bunge chair in the sunny garden.

Other times we three ambled along country roads. On one evening jaunt, the warm, quiet darkness became the perfect backdrop for hoards of fireflies fluttering among the trees twinkling like hundreds of small, white Christmas lights. Magical.

For our lighter evening meal, we happily finished our delectable leftovers or watched the sunset as we wined and dined on the patio at Gianetto's, an excellent restaurant just a two minute walk away.

On our last morning Keiko and I got up at 6:00 to say goodbye to Steve, who was meeting five Italian women on a sailboat in northern Italy. At 8:30 Luigi and Paola drove Keiko and me to Greve to catch the bus to Florence. I overheard Luigi talking about me to Paola. "She is so likeable because she loves Italy." I thought, "After a week at their place, is it any wonder why?"