Always wanted to learn more about Italian cooking? Try Pamela Sheldon Johns’ crash course in Tuscan food and wine, because, visiting local markets, picking fresh ingredients and learning generations-old cooking techniques will teach you more about Italy’s culinary paradise than any tour.
Held at Poggio Etrusco, a 15-acre farm where Johns lives and works with her husband, Johnny (an artist and expert cappuccino maker), and daughter, Alaia, Pamela’s workshops will have you rolling pici (fresh Tuscan pasta that is shaped a bit like spaghetti) with local Chef Massimiliano, piecing together ribollita, a soup/casserole that uses day-old bread (common in Tuscany, where nothing goes to waste) with Massimiliano’s mother Lina, eating fennel salame (finocchiona) with a spunky 90-year-old Contessa and kneading pizza dough with Pizzaiolo Gaetano.
You’ll also have a free pass into the kitchens of some of the region’s best restaurants, including Montepulciano’s La Grotta, where we had a lesson on pappa al pomodoro, a regional tomato soup. The back and forth between neighborhood cooks and practicing chefs is a touchstone for the course — which also leaves plenty of room for spontaneity (read: buying linens from a shopkeeper in nearby Monticchiello or sharing an aperitif with a coppersmith in Montepulciano).
Camaraderie, healthy cooking, lots of eating. It’s hard not to fall for.
Read more about this workshop in Misstropolis, the new online magazine for modern women.
