Tuscan Women Cook

Learn Italian Regional Cooking Deep in the Heart of Tuscany

By Anne Woodyard

Zucchini flowers are a delicacy that are a big part of Italian cooking.

Tuscan Women Cook is not just another cooking school. This residential program offers a unique involvement in Tuscan life. Participants in the week-long course stay at an elegantly restored farmhouse and olive mill near Montepulciano, and the food is produced from its gardens and ochards as well as local food producers.

A week full of food, wine, exploration, and shopping begins with a superb dinner that progresses from platters of crostini and toppings, to three types of homemade pasta, to stuffed breast of chicken-all served with wines grown on the surrounding hills. The view out an open window at the end of the rustic wooden table is tough competition for the delicious food.

Imagine cooking deep in the heart of Tuscany. Photo ©Transitions Abroad.

A spacious farmhouse kitchen is the setting for each morning's cooking class. The best cooks in Tuscany, usually women, demonstrate the local age-old recipes and techniques: using the freshest local ingredients and teaching simplicity and faithfulness to the ingredients.

In addition to cooking classes, the daily schedule, in which students can participate as much or as little as desired, includes a tour of a nearby winery and explorations of picture-postcard medieval villages.

The joy of this unique program is in the location, the gracious and knowledgeable hosts, and, most of all, in learning how Tuscan women cook at home: not the latest rage in Italian cuuisine, but how families have cooked for generations. Classes are offered from spring through fall. Cost of the program, which includes seven nights' accommodations and all meals for five days, is $4,775 per person based upon double occupancy. The classes accommodate cooks at all levels of expertise, and allow friends to be made from the world over.

Do try to reserve well in advance, as spaces fill up quickly, as you might imagine given the daily cooking, eating and drinking schedule offered.

For more information, visit Tuscan Women Cook.

ANNE WOODYARD writes from Herndon, VA.