Sapori e Saperi Adventures

Sapori e Saperi Adventures Inspiring courses with Italian artisans & culinary & craft tours of life behind the scenes.

Inspiring culinary tours of life behind the scenes that you won't find in any guidebook — get to know the food artisans and crafts people of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna.

Let's all adopt butcher shop Falaschi's Christmas request:🎄 Macelleria Falaschi wishes all of you to give PEACE & LOVEan...
21/12/2024

Let's all adopt butcher shop Falaschi's Christmas request:

🎄 Macelleria Falaschi wishes all of you to give PEACE & LOVE
and to never forget the SAUSAGE 🎄

The Falaschi family shop is in picturesque San Miniato where we start our Autumn in Tuscany tour.

More info about the tour: https://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/autumn-in-tuscany.html

The cotechino has arrived!Renato & Eugenia worked hard all yesterday preparing them for our special Christmas & New Year...
18/12/2024

The cotechino has arrived!

Renato & Eugenia worked hard all yesterday preparing them for our special Christmas & New Year meals.

Do you know why they're called cotechino? Because they contain a lot of little pieces of pork skin which is 'cotenna' in Italian with 'ino' added meaning small. They look like salami, but you eat them boiled. The traditional accompaniment in Casabasciana is lentils, but I like it best with mashed potatoes. Can't wait!

Learn how to make it on our Advanced Salumi Course Tuscany: https://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/advanced-salumi-course-tuscany.html

I love to go to Lucca's artisan Christmas market Il Desco. I get to see lots of my producer friends who I take you to me...
13/12/2024

I love to go to Lucca's artisan Christmas market Il Desco. I get to see lots of my producer friends who I take you to meet when you come on my tours.

I'm also looking for new producers, especially young ones who are rare this days. This time I found two from the Garfagnana. There was Lorenzo Bravi from La Capannina (azagr_lacapannina ) with chestnut flour and many shapes and colours of heritage beans, all Slow Food presidia. Lorenzo and his family dry their chestnuts in the traditional metato (chestnut drying hut). Lorenzo proudly explains that they clean their chestnuts twice to make sure all the brown skin around the chestnut has been removed. The skin is bitter and can ruin the flour. He wants to show me the clean dried chestnuts so I can see how creamy white they are, but he's already sold all of them. He takes the clean chestnuts to the same water mill my village used to go to back when there was a family that lit a metato every year. Lorenzo's flour is fabulously sweet! Tomorrow I'm going to make castagnaccio (a chestnut flour galette).

Then there was Daniele Gatti also from the Garfagnana and who also had chestnut flour, but I was attracted by the huge sack of beautiful walnuts he was selling. They'll go on top of the castagnaccio if I don't eat them all first 😉

The pesto in the jar? Not from Lucca. Pesto made with basil is from Genova, up the coast from us. The two men from Pesto Più di Pra' remembered me from a couple of years ago. And I remembered their pesto as the best I'd ever tasted. Better than mine 🥲 They asked whether I wanted it with or without garlic. Is it possible without garlic? They looked sad, but some people don't like garlic. We started talking about a visit to their laboratory, and I asked about small producers of other products near them. A new tour perhaps? What do you think?

The 2024 new olive oil is in the shops and we've assessed some of the Tuscan oil with our professional olive oil taster ...
09/12/2024

The 2024 new olive oil is in the shops and we've assessed some of the Tuscan oil with our professional olive oil taster Elisabetta Sebastio.

The verdict: good but not outstanding. Low values of the good qualities of fruitiness, bitterness and spiciness. But at least the olives were healthy and when treated well produced extra virgin oil (that means NO defects).

Want to learn how to use your nose and palate to assess olive oil so you have the skills to find good olive oil near you and enjoy it more? Come on our olive oil course in November 2025 (only 2 places left). Here's what one of our clients wrote:

'We were grateful to have her expertise :). It's that kind of knowledge that really helps us change how we think about food, which is what is so exciting about travelling for me.' Grazie, Erin.

More info: https://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/olive-oil-tree-to-table.html

Some precious words from a participant on our salumi course:📣I have just completed the Advanced Salumi course run by Eri...
27/11/2024

Some precious words from a participant on our salumi course:

📣I have just completed the Advanced Salumi course run by Erica. I have previous family knowledge of pork butchery in England from my grandfather and father, their shop having opened in 1919. This course takes the art of preparation, curing and maturation to another level and as an amateur Salumi producer for home consumption I have learnt so much more from the Italian artisan nocini. Erica’s course is so skilfully planned down to the last detail and the artisan butchers she knows so well have passed their skills and techniques on in such a way that will encourage me to adopt their artisan methods. I would highly recommend this course if you are interested in learning how Salumi is prepared from the welfare of the pig to the care of preparing such amazing products, the flavour of which is beyond anything I have ever tasted before.

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

Day 2: TUSCAN HERITAGETo***co arrived in Italy in the 1500s and was widely cultivated in Tuscany. Whatever your views ab...
18/11/2024

Day 2: TUSCAN HERITAGE
To***co arrived in Italy in the 1500s and was widely cultivated in Tuscany. Whatever your views about smoking, if our time machine lands in the fields between Anghiari and Sansepolcro anytime between 1574 and the present day, you'll see to***co, almost all grown for the manufacture of the Tuscan cigar.

Ours conveys us to Roberta and Valeriano's to***co farm where they still do all the important processes by hand. We go to the field to see them harvesting. It had been raining and, as we drive along the muddy track in our 16-seater bus, our driver keeps muttering, 'I'm not a tractor!' We do indeed get stuck, but a good heave by the men liberates us.

Back at the house Valeriano shows us what makes a good leaf for a cigar wrapper. It's surprisingly elastic, like a fine sheet of rubber. We see the leaves drying over a wood fire. It takes years of experience to know how to regulate the heat and humidity in the drying room.

Roberta has rolled some contraband ci**rs for us and explains that they used to be made immediately after the war when people were starving. Since to***co is regulated by the state, the peasants rolled the ci**rs at night and hid them under the floors of their houses until the smuggler came to buy them with sorely needed cash.

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

I hope you missed us. We've been busy running tours. October was the first outing for the Tuscan Heritage tour. I had im...
15/11/2024

I hope you missed us. We've been busy running tours. October was the first outing for the Tuscan Heritage tour. I had imagined the tour as a time machine carrying us from southeastern to northwestern Tuscany while zigzagging across the centuries. Hoping none of us got travel sickness!

It worked! For now let's relax with an aperitivo. Gabriele, cultivator of ancient grains, Cinta Senese pig farmer and norcino (pork butcher), and owner of Agriturismo Terra di Michelangelo where we were staying, served us local pinot nero wine and a platter of his salumi. Dinner began with tagliatelle con ovoli, delicate wild mushrooms available only in this season, which was followed by a pork stew and dolce. Apart from the pinot nero, we could have been at a 14th-century banquet.

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

Day 1 of our Tuscan Heritage tour. We're staying at Agriturismo Terra di Michelangelo. The owner Gabriele rears Cinta Se...
13/10/2024

Day 1 of our Tuscan Heritage tour. We're staying at Agriturismo Terra di Michelangelo. The owner Gabriele rears Cinta Senese pigs and he's offered to take us to see them.

The belted pig of Siena has been around since at least 1338 when Ambrogio Lorenzetti depicted them in his ‘Allegory of Good and Bad Government’ in frescos in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena.

Back at the agriturismo we tasted his prosciiutto matured for 36 months. Divine!

Today is archangel St Michael's feast day. Here's my latest photo of him in a church in Oliena, the town were we begin o...
29/09/2024

Today is archangel St Michael's feast day. Here's my latest photo of him in a church in Oliena, the town were we begin our new Tastes & Textiles: Carpet Weavers of Sardinia tour.

Often the archangel is represented wearing delicate sandals, but here he's depicted in sturdy boots, like the ones I'd choose if I had an assignment to banish Satan from Heaven.

More details of the new tour here: https://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/tastes--textiles-carpet-weavers-of-sardinia.html (only one place left)

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Video

CELEBRATING SARDINIA TOUR—Entranced by the launeddas, a Sardinian instrument that is at least 3000 years old. Three pipes that sound like bagpipes. But where's the bag? . . #celebratingsardinia #traditionalmusic #launeddas #experientialtravel

Making Garfagnana Potato Bread with Paolo Magazzini
Making Garfagnana Potato Bread with Paolo Magazzini

#RealBreadWeek starts today! If you've been following our posts, you'll know we've been warming up all week during our Artisan Bread Course Tuscany. We finished on a high point—literally high up in the mountains of the Garfagnana and figuratively because it's always exciting to make Garfagnana potato bread with Paolo Magazzini at Petrognola. Warren Lombardy who is taking the course made this reel.

Next week is #RealBreadWeek. We're starting a week early here in Lucca. First day, sourdough bread with Damiano Donati He uses various flours all cultivated in Tuscany. Today it's a little '00', some 85% (tipo 2) and wholemeal heritage durum wheat called 'Senatore Capelli', some potato to add moisture that lasts for several days and his own 'lievito madre' (sourdough starter. It's in the fridge now for an overnight rise. We'll be back in the morning to put it in the oven. ARTISAN BREAD COURSE TUSCANY Video credit: Warren Bill Lombardy

The last of the festive season. Last night we welcomed the good witch #Befana. Monday normality reasserts itself. Casabasciana

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Inspiring culinary courses & tours of life behind the scenes that you won't find in any guidebook — get to know the food artisans and crafts people of Tuscany & Sardinia.