about the author

Giancarlo and Katie Caldesi run two successful restaurants in Marylbone, London – the Caldesi restaurant and Caffé Caldesi. They held cooking classes in the restaurant kitchen for six years, before expanding their business to form La Cucina Caldesi, a cookery school that offers courses in Italian food and wines. After the success of their cookery classes in Tuscany in 2005, they are planning to return there every summer. Giancarlo and Katie's first book, The Italian Mama’s Kitchen, was published in 2005.

about the book

Giancarlo and Katie Caldesi, the husband-and-wife team behind two Italian restaurants and a cookery school in London, are passionate about food and about Italy. Their eagerness to share this with others inspired them to relocate to Tuscany for a few months, to rediscover Giancarlo’s culinary roots and run a series of courses in traditional Tuscan cooking.

Return to Tuscany is the result of their successful sojourn in Tuscany. Each chapter starts with a lesson, reflecting the different stages of their cookery course, guiding you through the basic techniques of pasta-making, choosing the best ingredients for an antipasti platter, cooking meat on an open fire, and many other aspects of Tuscan cooking.

In 80 delicious regional recipes, Giancarlo and Katie pass on methods used by generations of the Caldesi family, with tips supplied by their Italian friends and neighbours. They describe how to make well-known Tuscan dishes, such Tomato Bruschetta, the classic Ribollita soup and the traditional Plum Crostata, as well as personal favourites that were popular with their students, including Mussel and Clam Spaghetti with Fresh Tomato Salsa and Chicken with Cinnamon and Lemon.

Illustrated with a wealth of stunning location shots and food photography, Return to Tuscany is both an easy-to-follow cookery book and an inspirational introduction to the culture and traditions of this beautiful part of Italy.

Contents

Cover

About the Book

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Returning to Tuscany

Antipasti and vegetables

Salted sardines with chopped red onion

White winter salad with honey dressing

Tomato bruschetta

Bresaola, rocket and parmesan rolls

Balsamic onions

Gregorio’s aubergine slices

Stuffed chillies

Oven-roasted vegetables with crumbled goats’ cheese, thyme and parsley

Black crostini

Mushroom crostini

Sformato of carrots

Porcini and pecorino refried mash

Cannellini bean and rosemary mash

Luciano’s roast potatoes

Green beans in tomato sauce

Stocks and soups

Vegetable stock

Fish stock

Chicken stock

Beef stock

Giancarlo’s soffritto

Luciano’s soffritto

Fennel and rosemary soup

Chick-pea soup

Ribollita

Gregorio’s chestnut and lentil soup

Mixed bean soup

Orchard-keepers’ soup

Fish soup

Pasta

Giancarlo’s fresh pasta recipe

Basic tomato sauce

Duck ragu

Pici

Arrabbiata sauce

Pino’s tagliatelle with radicchio, truffle and sausage

Mussel and clam spaghetti with fresh tomato salsa

Giancarlo’s gnocchi

Sausage and porcini sauce

Meat ragu

White lasagne

Mantovana

Meat, poultry and game

Pork with marsala

Porchetta

Dora’s meat loaf

Beef stew with mushroom crostini

Calves’ liver with butter and sage

Steak tagliata with rocket, parmesan and balsamic dressing

Veal parcels stuffed with cheese in a wild mushroom sauce

Devilled poussin

Chicken with cinnamon and lemon

Mustard-roast chicken with caramelized onions

Guinea fowl with apricots, chestnuts, prunes and vin santo

Roast pheasant and guinea fowl in terracotta

Wild boar with chocolate

Rack of lamb in red wine, onions and rosemary

Fish and seafood

Grilled fish with parsley, lemon and chilli dressing

Perch with tomatoes, capers and black olives

Pan-fried sea bass with garlic and cherry tomatoes

Monkfish cooked with parsley and white wine

Oven-baked sea bream with tuscan herb stuffing

Livia’s baccalà

Steamed mussels

Warm octopus, potato and lemon salad

Desserts and preserves

Roasted fruits

Fig and orange upside-down cake

Plum crostata

Hazelnut meringue biscuits

Panforte

Dark chocolate semifreddo with hot white chocolate sauce

Chocolate, cinnamon and pear tart

Vin santo and honey ice cream

Limoncello granita

Peach ripple ice cream

Livia’s easy peach jam

Bread and pizza

Quick focaccia

Traditional focaccia

Pane toscano

Breadsticks

Torta al testo

Thin oven-baked pizza

Focaccia stuffed with mozarella

Pan’ co’ santi

Menu suggestions

Acknowledgements

Copyright

We knew it was going to be hard work with new students arriving and old ones departing on the same day and that most of the time we would be ‘miked up’ and followed by cameras.

When we reached Dover, late at night in the pouring rain, we carried the sleeping children into a cheap hotel next to a noisy bus station and tried to sleep. The next day the sun shone and we got up early for the ferry to France. The children were excited and so were we. Over the next three days, Giancarlo and I had time to calm down. As the landscape grew more beautiful around us, our stress disappeared and we talked over every aspect of what we expected of the next few weeks.

We had been married in Montepulciano, Tuscany, in June, opened our cookery school in London in July, honeymooned in the Caribbean in August and now we had packed up to run a cookery school in Italy for a few weeks in September. Friends and family told us we were crazy and they were probably right! In fact, the school in London should have opened in April, giving us more time to see it established before we abandoned it. As it was, we had to brief the staff of our restaurants and new cooking school and leave the businesses in their hands.

Giancarlo’s father, Memmo, had died in Tuscany in the summer of 2004. This personal loss was compounded by the tragic sale of the home that had been in the family for generations. We knew this would be an emotional journey for Giancarlo; he wanted to have a memorial service for his father and sort out the last of his belongings. He feared he was losing touch with his roots, so we were keen to re-establish a foothold in Tuscany.

Before committing to buying a house in Tuscany, we thought we’d see how we felt about living there either temporarily or permanently; what the children would think of it; how they would settle into Italian school life; and what we’d think about living in the countryside instead of central London. We also liked the idea of bringing people to Tuscany and teaching them to cook – so the idea of setting up a Tuscan cookery school was born.

In December 2004 we had looked at several villas to rent for the following summer and then come across Hotel Le Rotelle (here) outside the small town of Torrita di Siena. It was in a beautiful rural location near Montepulciano, where Giancarlo had grown up. It had a wonderful view, a large newly built pool and, despite being a hotel, the building seemed small enough to still feel homely. The only trouble was that there was no one there when we went to visit. We peered in through the windows and could just about make out the kitchen, the restaurant and one of the bedrooms. We fell in love with it and then had to rush to catch the plane home. Over Christmas we negotiated a deal with the owners and started advertising the cookery school. On our next visit, in February, we checked out the inside and decided to have our wedding reception there. That way we could spend a week ironing out any problems before opening the school.

Ironically, it was the loss of his father and his family home that led Giancarlo to realize that this was the right time to return to Tuscany, to rediscover his roots, his family and the local recipes – an opportunity to reconnect with his culture and to introduce me to his past. We had been living together for eight years and now we wanted to get married. Giancarlo wanted to have a big wedding, to invite both English and Italian families, and to have a chance to get to know his vast array of cousins, both close and distant, all over again.

Why Giancarlo left Tuscany

Giancarlo and his family had endured poverty for many years, as did many Italians at the time of his childhood. This, coupled with visits from a wealthy cousin who had emigrated to America, gave him a wanderlust, a need to discover the world, abandon his farming background and search for a more prosperous way of life. Until he was 17 years old he had never set foot out of Tuscany and his family had never taken holidays. At the earliest opportunity Giancarlo left home to work as a commis waiter in nearby Chianciano Terme. He was only 13 years old, worked all hours of the day, took no breaks and lived in. Although his wages were very low and he wasn’t treated well, it was far away from farm life and the hardships of living off the land.

His next move was to a completely different world – the bustling metropolis of Rome. He worked as a waiter at the Hilton Cavalieri and loved it. He had to leave a year later, however, to go into the army. Conscription has only just ended in Italy and Giancarlo, like all his contemporary male friends, had to do his military service. As his work experience was in restaurants, he was given the job of waiter in an officers’ mess. However, Giancarlo, ever the daredevil, had different ideas – he wanted to be a paratrooper. He believed this would give him status among his peers, would make him devastatingly attractive to the opposite sex and, above all, provide great excitement – every boy’s dream! I think his days as a paratrooper gave him an incredible inner strength. He never gives up and works long hours without a break – he also expects others to do the same and cannot bear laziness or lack of punctuality. He never wears a watch but is always on time whereas I always wear one but am always 10 minutes late. It drives him mad!

After his two years’ army service Giancarlo was able to continue working at the Hilton Cavlieri. This time he asked for a transfer abroad and the first vacancy that came up was in London. After a spell at the Park Lane Hilton and several other restaurants he settled for some years at the City Circle, a popular restaurant in the heart of the City of London. It was boom time and he enjoyed a good salary and saw the kind of wealth he had never seen in Tuscany.

He soon developed the ambition to have his own place and the opportunity arose when he was working for a restaurant group that went bust. He bought one of its restaurants with two friends and the partners ran Portico in the City for a few years. This allowed them to buy another restaurant. It was there that Giancarlo lost his temper with a chef, asked him to leave immediately and donned his apron. He started to cook from that moment on. The restaurant was a huge success and this enabled him to set up the Caldesi restaurant in Marylebone Lane, which we still have. Giancarlo started it 14 years ago and four years later I arrived on the scene to give it a facelift. I’ve been there ever since.

How it all started …

I was a painter of walls, a muralist, and living in Eastbourne when a commission arose through a mutual friend who asked me to come and help him paint a cellar bar in London. I promptly packed my portfolio and went off to meet Mr Caldesi who had, in fact, donned an old pair of tight blue overalls and decided to clean the stairs that day. On arrival at the bar I walked past the odd-looking man scrubbing furiously on the stairs, who had to move out of my way to let me past. When I got inside I asked where I could meet Mr Caldesi, and his partner took great delight in telling me I had just pushed him out of the way and knocked him off the stairs as I descended them!

Giancarlo tells me he knew we would be together from that first instant. It took me a little longer to know he was the man for me – the overalls really weren’t that flattering! However, it wasn’t long before the suave man who usually dressed in beautiful Italian suits and reeked of expensive aftershave grew on me. Our mutual love of food, art and each other grew rapidly. We are now married and have two children, Giorgio, nearly six, and Flavio, four (below). They too enjoy food and love to cook, which is fortunate as I don’t excel at playing trains and cars!

It was a year or so before Giancarlo took me to Tuscany to meet his family and show me his region of Italy. His parents had been contadini or peasant farmers, and had a smallholding in a rural area. The house had been in his family for generations, and his father showed me where they had kept cows, pigs and rabbits and we collected eggs from the few remaining chickens. He still kept a fully stocked herb garden and every day he picked basil and rosemary for his cooking. When Giancarlo was a boy his parents were almost totally self-sufficient, but more recently the crops and animals had gone. His family had known great poverty, as had most Italians after the Second World War but, although he has no memories of childhood luxuries, Giancarlo does have very fond memories of wonderful food and wine, of parties and celebrations.

His parents have now gone but his remaining family and friends have warmly welcomed both me and our children. Nello Ceccuzzi, Giancarlo’s childhood neighbour, is in many respects a second brother to him, and his wife Livia and their son Daniele have become an intrinsic part of my life. We have shared tears, happiness and always good food. This generous, loyal family have a smallholding and are 80 per cent self-sufficient – Nello tends to the orchard, Daniele looks after the vines and Livia is a wonderful cook. It is from them that Giancarlo and I have learnt the most. The Ceccuzzi family are contadini and Nello (below left, with Daniele) delighted in telling two of the film crew that, as they were from the town, they wouldn’t be able to understand how the wine-making machines worked – only contadini would be able to work it out!

Italians are fiercely proud of their origins. Whenever two of them meet abroad the first thing they ask is, ‘Where are you from?’ – often followed by, ‘Who do you support?’ Without exception, every Italian believes passionately that their region is the best, their football team, their food, their spaghetti ragu recipe – everything. After all, the unification of the 20 regions as one country only happened in 1870.

Tuscan food: rooted in tradition

‘What strange people the Italians are,’ I hear myself say as I travel around Italy. On the one hand, they are so modern and they encourage weird and wonderful ground-breaking design in fashion, furniture, lighting and architecture – yet, on the other hand, they are firmly rooted in their traditions. And this is what is so fascinating about their food. The average Italian knows how to make a ragu and the recipe will have come from one of his or her grandmothers, and that is how the family always makes it. The recipe won’t have changed in the last hundred years or so and nor will it in the hands of the next generation. Italians would never consider it. You can ask a Tuscan, ‘Why don’t you have salt in your bread? Don’t you think it would taste better?’ ‘Yes,’ he or she will say, ‘but that’s how it is done in Tuscany. Saltless bread, it’s always been like that and it always will be.’ I frequently find Italian’s spectacularly closed minds infuriating, but I have to admit their food is delicious. If it works, why change it? Lasagne has been pleasing people since the Renaissance. So who am I to introduce a twist to this classic dish?

Giancarlo’s recipes are by and large those of his mother and grandmother. There are some I have been brave enough to add to, but only after they have been tested and approved by Giancarlo, his family and his friends.

Giancarlo and I both wanted to see the Tuscans cook their food in their own country. I’d been visiting Tuscany for seven years but still hadn’t spent long in anyone’s kitchen. Giancarlo wanted to work with his own people again and learn from them. Even within Tuscany the food varies from the coastal regions to the inland area. Montepulciano in southern Tuscany, where Giancarlo comes from, is a long way from the coast – a land of hills and lakes, of verdant plains and rugged forests. But times had changed since Giancarlo lived there, with fish being more easily available, even away from the coast, bigger and better markets and many more restaurants.

Artisan foods are well respected and we discovered fantastic supplies of Cinta Senese pork, chianina beef, pecorino cheeses and many, many more delicious products, all made by enthusiastic, passionate people. Even the younger generation are keen to make the most of their own produce wherever possible, making their own wines and olive oil, and tending their own fruit trees. By shopping locally at farm shops and markets we were able to buy an enormous amount of good-quality fruit and vegetables at very reasonable prices. After one of our trips to buy food, we fed 11 people for just 55 Euros (about £38).

Italians tend only to eat foods that are in season – there is usually little available out of season and what there is, is generally tasteless or foreign! You never see Tuscans buying tomatoes in December because they will eat their own bottled ones.

Tuscan food has two clear origins: rich and poor. La cucina nobile is from the nobility and uses expensive cuts of meat and exotic spices. It dates back to the Renaissance and beyond, even to Roman times. In the Renaissance, Tuscany was influenced by the spice trade and, to show off their wealth, cooks used spices such as cinnamon, cardamom and ginger. La cucina povera comes from the contadini and is peasant cooking at its best. As necessity is the mother of all invention, so Tuscan mothers are the inventors of an amazing array of recipes that require only local ingredients. How many dishes can you invent to use up stale bread and beans? Ask me and I will tell you if you have a few days to spare!

Our students on the cookery course were surprised by the amount of salt and olive oil used in Tuscan cooking. You cannot expect to re-create any of the dishes you’ll find in the following pages if you are not prepared to be generous with these. The same goes for herbs – they should be fresh and preferably picked from your window box or garden, or bought from your local supermarket. Tuscans rarely use dried herbs, apart from oregano, which is not widely available in Tuscany.

I have discovered so much about Tuscan food as a result of running the cookery school and being able to spend so much time with Giancarlo’s circle of family and friends, as well as the staff in the hotel in Tuscany: Giancarlo the fungaiolo (mushroom-hunter), Stefano our pastry chef, Gregorio our head chef and Aunt Gina, who shared her cake recipes with me.

Lifestyle and attitudes to food

Italians know their food. And they talk about it all the time. For some this might be irritating – for me, it’s fascinating and makes me feel at ease – aah, people after my own heart!