On a cooking holiday you escape to a simpler, life of times past
filled with real joys: food cooked slowly, lovingly by a cosy
group, sampling rich regional wines, and savouring genuine local
dishes. Later, you share experiences heart to heart, sitting
around the table for hours with friends; 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 savour
fresh sage, oregano, basil, lemon, wine and rose perfumes wafting
on the breeze in 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 Position 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 fall for Italian food and wines. The
Italians use fresh ingredients in season. Spring means artichoke,
asparagus, sweet pea and seafood dishes in Venice. Fall is
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 more rustic reds such as Primitivo in
southern Puglia. You enjoy dessert wines from dry vin santo in
Tuscany to sweet, intense Passito in Sicily.
You fall in love with hauntingly beautiful landscapes. Cook with
chefs in Piedmont’s Barolo wine country in northwest Italy, and
look out over waves of gentle hills fading into the distance,
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 fall in love with the art all
around you. Art in every day life; survey pyramids of smaller and
smaller jars of green and black olives and hot red sauces piled
high in the Palermo market. The art of ancient architects…
remains of Greek temples stand 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, you cook with
chefs in their restaurants, explore medieval towns, and taste
fine wines with winery owners who treat you like old friends.
At the start of another cooking tour, one couple seemed a little
distant. The husband had been very reluctant to go. By the end of
the week, they were dancing and holding hands. They fell in love
all over again. Who can resist the romance of Italy!
Of course, you fall in love with the Italian people. They talk
about life, about feelings, with no pretences. Italians lead
busy, full lives, yet somehow find time for heart-to-heart talks
over food and wine.
Rediscover the person you were before you got so busy with
obligations and things. Was it you who piled so much marzipan
fruit on top of your dessert you won a prize for the worst
decoration, or were you always first up dancing when the music
started?
So go ahead, indulge in a sensual, hedonistic cooking tour in
Italy, fall in love, bring some of that joy home with you!
|
