Sapori e Saperi Adventures

04/03/2025

I was there when Davide Salvetti, President of my village Casabasciana, won one of the six semi-finals of the annual zuppa championship. Bravo Davide 👏

Organised by Slow Food Lucca Compitese Ortilucchesi, the semi-serious competition with a mix of companilismo (everything around my church tower must be best 😉) and a sharing of experience aims to keep local food traditions alive.

Zuppa isn't soup. It's more a thick vegetable stew mixed with bread. It must contain four ingredients: beans, cavolo nero, bread and new extra virgin olive oil. Other ingredients can include any winter vegetable (no zucchini, please) including wild plants.

If you're curious to know more: https://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/blog/slow-food-disfida-della-zuppa-or-soup-tournament

02/03/2025

Extra Mozzarella Course in Italy April 2025 - https://mailchi.mp/sapori-e-saperi.com/mozzarella-courses-from-sapori-e-saperi-adventures-9297611

📅 When: 13–18 April 2025
📍 Where: Caseificio Prime Querce, Paestum (Campania, Italy)
💰 Fee: 2800 Euros (includes accommodation, meals, ground transport from meeting point, course & course booklet, answers to all your questions)
😊 Availability: 2 places (maybe 3)

Course suitable for cheesemakers, cheese vendors, dairy animal farmers, chefs and keen amateurs who want to make their own mozzarella. Taught in English. Maximum course size: 5 people.

https://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/mozzarella--its-cousins.html

20/02/2025

TASTES & TEXTILES TOURS
Happy to have been included in the Handweavers Guild of America - HGA Travel & Workshop LIVE event.

You can find me at 49 minutes (followed by some technical glitches) and then roaring along from 52 mintues.

https://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/textiles.html

16/02/2025

No one knows when the tenore singing started or where it came from. When I listen I feel transported to somewhere exotic.

During our Carpets of Sardinia tour we're having a private concert with this group.

https://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/tastes--textiles-carpet-weavers-of-sardinia.html

12/02/2025

Have you heard that you can't make bread without salt?

We exploded the myth in our workshop with master baker Stefano Gatti.

The ingredients: strong white bread flour, wholemeal flour, wholemeal farro flour, liquid starter, water. NO SALT!

▶️ More info: https://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/artisan-bread-course-tuscany.html

10/02/2025

It's INTERNATIONAL DAY OF LEGUMES 🫘 Tuscans are renowned bean eaters. Lucca carries this to extremes!

We have about 26 different varieties of legumes which custodian farmers have committed to keep cultivating. And Slow Food Lucca Compitese invented the annual Slow Beans event.

Here are the stories of some of my favourite lucchesi beans.

📌Top right: Fogiolo rosso (red bean) of Lucca is a Slow Food Presidium.
📌Middle right: Fagiolo giallorino (yellowish bean). also grown at Gallicano in the Garfagnano. We'll use it this week during our Artisan Bread Course Tuscany to make fagioli all'uccelletto, a traditional accompaniment of the Fogaccia Leva di Gallicano.
📌Bottom right: Fagiolo fico. According to legend one bean arrived in Gallicano in the hat band of an immigrant from California and has been cultivated there ever since.
📌Click through the other photos to see the most lurid beans!

09/02/2025

Make cheese in Tuscany - https://mailchi.mp/sapori-e-saperi.com/cheese-course-in-tuscany-2504-2506
News about the benefits of raw milk cheese

08/02/2025

📣 On the eve of our Artisan Bread Course Tuscany (9–14 February) & heralding Real Bread Week (15–23 February) 🍞 let's concentrate on SIMPLICITY.

In the words of Tona Erreguin, fine-dining chef turned baker and bakery co-owner:

'...our Oxford Country Loaf won the plain sourdough category of the Britain's Best Loaf awards. Seeing our trophy on the coffee machine every morning is a reminder that beauty exists in simplicity. At the same time, this category is probably the most complicated: a plain loaf is nothing more than flour, water and salt. Knowing that we had turned those three basic ingredients into something that stands out—sparking imagination and feeling—assured us that we had fulfilled our mission... The best things don't have to be complicated, they just have to be done well.'
True Loaf, The Real Bread Campaign Magazine, Issue 61, January–March 2025

06/02/2025

Does your heart leap with joy at the first signs of Spring?

That delicate wild crocus on the left pushes up through the remains of the spiky chestnut cases, one of the emblems of Autumn.

SEASONALITY is one of the themes of my tours and courses. How much better strawberries taste in May than brought from I don't know where at Christmas. And if you haven't had them all year, the flavour explodes in your mouth as if you'd never tasted one before. Heavenly!

05/02/2025

The ZUPPA challenge is back! Don't confuse zuppa with soup. Zuppa comes from the verb 'inzuppare' and means to dip bread in a liquid. This is a thick bean and winter vegetable stew (like minestrone) which must contain bread. Every lucchese family has its own recipe.

📍 If you're anywhere near Lucca on these dates, book your place now and be part of the jury which judges the zuppa.

📅 I'm going on 1 March. Will you be there too?

🤓 If you want to read more about zuppa, try my blogs (but honestly, it's better to go along and taste it 😋):

https://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/blog/another-zuppa

CI SIAMO!

Sabato prossimo, 8 febbraio, inizia ufficialmente la DISFIDA DELLA ZUPPA 🤩

📌6 gustosissime tappe nei paesi della Zuppa, dove questo piatto è tradizione locale, quasi una religione...

Non mancate!

31/01/2025

TUSCAN HERITAGE — DAY 2 (CONTINUED)
I hope you haven't starved to death while waiting for lunch after my post back in November about our Tuscan Heritage tour. Just to remind you, we spent the morning at Roberta's and Valeriano's to***co farm and we were about to leave for lunch. But where to?

That question had been nagging at me ever since designing this tour. I wanted lunch on a farm. Suddenly I remembered some excellent cheese I had had at Talozzi Bistrot in Anghiari (more about it in a later post). It was from Cooperativa Montemercole, in the mountains above Anghiari. My driver recommended it too. On my tours a local driver with a paunch is essential! He also knew that if we followed Google maps, we'd get stuck halfway there. Thanks to Pietro's local knowledge we arrived in time for lunch.

is an agricultural cooperative which rears cattle, sheep and pigs. They make cheese and cure pork, both of which were on our tasting platter. Aurora was there to welcome us with passion and excitement for their project.

If you can't get to their farm, they also have a restaurant in Arezzo (see the last photo in this post for the tongue and pickled cabbage I had for lunch there).

If you book this year's tour, I hope we'll get to watch the cheesemaking.

More info: https://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/tuscan-heritage.html

25/01/2025

Salumi courses in Italy availability update - https://mailchi.mp/sapori-e-saperi.com/salumi-courses-in-italy-9296943
Book now and get a discount on places available due to cancellation.

20/01/2025

Making top of the range sausages with Ismaele Turri. They have to be the best quality because we eat them raw in Tuscany.

Not joking! Come try for yourself.

https://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/advanced-salumi-course-tuscany.html

15/01/2025

Join us on our salumi course Bologna-Parma - https://mailchi.mp/sapori-e-saperi.com/salumi-bologna-parma-9296783

13/01/2025

TASTES & TEXTILES: SEA SILK IN SARDINIA
You'll be inspired by our visit to Arianna PIntus — weaver, spinner, natural dyer, flax farmer – and most important for our tour one of the few remaining weavers working with byssus (sea silk), the beard of a giant mollusc.

Join us in beautiful Sardinia to find out its history and mysteries!

👉 https://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/tastes--textiles-sea-silk-in-sardinia.html

12/01/2025

January seasonal eating

Home from the farmer's market with
• rapini–delicious steamed and then sautéed with Renato's sausage
• radicchio & scarola (endive)–excellent raw as a salad or sautéed with garlic, anchovies, raisins and pine nuts
• bietola (Swiss chard)—steam and then sauté with garlic and pine nuts or mix with meat in stuffing for tortelli

01/01/2025

Salumi course in Emilia: book your place now - https://mailchi.mp/sapori-e-saperi.com/salumi-bologna-parma-9296589

28/12/2024

JEWEL BOX OF TOURS IN 2025 - https://mailchi.mp/sapori-e-saperi.com/celebsard2505-9296550
Have a look at the tours you can book this autumn