La Tavola Marche Cooking Classes

Its so nice to be back with the young American couple at La Tavola Marche and lucky that we doing some more one on one cooking classes. This weekend was to be with several other couples but life happened for them and its just Sandy and I so a big win win for us.

 

It's a soft place to stop here in central Italy as we are able to regroup and get some English speaking lessons on cooking as well as insights into the Italian way of life through a couple that moved here from America 10 years ago to set up this agro-tourism and cooking school.
It is the start of autumn here in Italy so this weekend is a 3 day course on how the Italians in the Marche food region would preserve the end of summer vege's for the long snowy winter ahead.

We are in the mountains and 60km away from where last winters earthquake took out a small village. It's very rugged terrain and in the winter months some of the little villages are snowed in for several weeks so preserving is necessary.

Pickle, Preserve and Confit
As tomato's are one of the staples for Italian people so its only fitting our course starts with us in the vege garden picking then bottling tomatoes.

 

 The smell of the sun ripened tomatoes is a sensory over load! We are picking several varieties but the one I love the taste of the most is the Datorini which original is from Sicily and Calabria way down south. ( for the history buffs and me my next blog will be asking Mr Google )