A Year in a Tuscan Cooking School: June

Cooking through grief, sharing stories, celebrating the flavors of early summer, plus ten zucchini (and zucchini blossom) recipes to fall in love with

Before we dive into the sixth chapter of A year in a Tuscan Cooking School, let me tell you why I’ve been quiet lately and rather inconsistent here in the newsletter. The past two months have been quite a challenge. First came my surgery and recovery, followed by Tommaso’s planned surgery and rather lengthy recovery. And then, at the beginning of June, my dear grandma passed away.

I’ve been compartmentalizing my emotions, dedicating time to cooking classes, and allocating hours to book edits. But writing was something I found difficult. Once you begin to write and open the floodgates of memory, there’s no stopping it. So it became hard to make space for writing, as I didn’t want to be caught off guard before I felt ready to face it all.

There will be time to write about Nonna—her legacy, and what her love and example have meant to me—but for now, I’m still fumbling for the right words. So today, I’ll share the stories, ingredients, recipes, and flickers of joy from June, a month that has been both hard and sweet at the same time. Thank you for your patience and kindness, for your supportive words, and, most of all, for staying with me even when I haven’t quite been at my best.

If you’re new to the series, you can revisit the previous chapters here: January, February, March, April, and May.

JUNE

June smelled of dried mint crushed beneath my shoes and hay bales stacked beside the oak trees, as I took my late afternoon walks, working through class plans, drifting thoughts, and that quiet melancholy that always seems to catch me off guard when summer arrives.

If writing has been difficult, cooking came more easily. And there’s been quite a lot of it. Teaching classes and choosing recipes—many of them passed down from my grandma or inspired by her over the years—felt natural. It was a quiet, powerful celebration of her legacy. That, I could manage. So it’s been a month of family favourites: stuffed round zucchini and insalata russa, panzanella and paper-thin cucumber slices, dressed with vinegar until they turned almost translucent.

Over the course of six classes and one three-day Masterclass, more than 50 students joined our classes, mainly from the US, but also from Canada, Brazil, Ireland, Portugal, Romania, Switzerland, Venezuela, and the Netherlands. We may not travel as much as we’d like to, but through the people we meet in our classes, we get to see the world through their stories and experiences.

While stirring a tomato sauce or chopping vegetables for a salad, we end up talking about all sorts of things: the kind of salt they use in Portugal, the school system in the Netherlands, Japanese communities in Brazil, honey production in Ireland, or the typical ingredients of a Romanian lunch.

Crafting the menu is my favorite part of each class: you begin with dislikes and allergies, move on to preferences and curiosities, and then weave your way through traditional recipes and whatever the season has to offer. It’s creative and fun—never boring—and it gives me the chance to cook something different every single day. My students are always pleasantly surprised to see that I create the menu around their tastes, and they truly enjoy being part of the process, choosing recipes together, right there on the spot.

Inspiration often begins with a simple idea, a draft of a recipe that would perfectly suit the season and the mood of the day.

Then you meet your students over coffee at the local café—just down the road from your old primary school—and let that idea evolve and ripen at the market, as you taste a deep red cherry or press an eggplant to test its plumpness. That’s how, in June, we ended up making egg yolk ravioli, tomato tonnato, zucchini carpaccio (wait for this recipe in a future newsletter) with ricotta on the side, eggplant meatballs, pici all’aglione, ricotta crumb cake with strawberry, olive oil cake with peaches, fruit salad with elderflower syrup, and a creamy saffron and zucchini risotto.

There have been many kind and affectionate words this month, especially whenever I mentioned nonna—and that happened often—and found myself with teary eyes. But the compliment that touched me the most was this: We chose your class because you said it would feel like cooking with family—and that’s exactly what it was. We felt welcomed into your home. We felt part of it. Thank you for opening your house to us.

I inherited this deep sense of hospitality, l’accoglienza, from my family.

Hospitality means welcoming likes and dislikes while working on a menu that respects everyone’s expectations, guiding my guests among the market stalls on the discovery of seasonal produce. It involves picking the best ingredients for them: taralli and local pecorino to nibble on just before rolling out fresh pasta, zesty clementines, or ripe cherries on a bowl on the counter as a quick snack.

It means sharing not only a recipe— a simple set of instructions that could be found online or in a cookbook—but also the layered universe of meanings, stories, characters, and emotions connected to that recipe, inviting every student to take part in our family, if only for a day.

And food is still my favorite means to make people feel welcomed and loved.

Read more about it here: On food and hospitality

Summer cooking classes and the unwanted guest

There’s something undeniably charming about the idea of teaching cooking classes in summer: basketfuls of ripe tomatoes, chargrilled eggplants drenched in herby extra virgin olive oil, fresh tagliatelle with a buttery zucchini sauce speckled with basil and mint, and zesty lemons with thick yellow rinds as the perfect backdrop to icy cold fruit salads. It’s all beautifully in tune with the tomato girl aesthetic I wrote about in a past newsletter.

But that’s not the whole story. There’s more—much more—and that’s part of what teaching classes really involves.

The heat, for one, is the true (and rather unwelcome) guest of the summer kitchen. In the fifteen years I’ve been teaching, the heat has grown increasingly intense. The kitchen becomes sticky and humid, with pots bubbling for pasta and the oven roasting trays of tomatoes. Thankfully, we have air conditioning in our studio—but it’s the only room in the house with this now-essential feature for surviving the new Italian summers.

And there’s a before and an after to every class. There’s shopping at the market, sweat already trickling down my back by 9am. There’s the clean-up—scrubbing the kitchen from top to bottom, getting it ready for the next group, when all you’d really like to do is lie on the bed in nothing but your skin. There’s cutting dahlias and zinnias at dusk to decorate the table, only to watch them wilt almost instantly under the relentless sun.

I’m not complaining. This is a job I love—yes, even in the height of summer. Summer ingredients are, without question, my absolute favourites. But I do think it’s important to share this side of the story too. The behind-the-scenes reality is precisely why we’ve chosen to limit our classes to no more than three per week, and why we’re so excited to expand our masterclasses—especially during the quieter, cooler low season.

June’s favorites from the market

Zucchini and Zucchini Blossoms

Zucchini are the first summer vegetable I welcome back into my cooking repertoire as soon as the warm season begins. I never tire of them—even when our neighbour calls us over the fence at night to hand us two oversized marrows that went unnoticed for a couple of days! I make pasta with zucchini, sautéed zucchini as a side dish, zucchini and tuna salads, zucchini frittata, and even zucchini carbonara (you’ll find all the links to these recipes below).

Zucchini blossoms are a real treat—delicate and fleeting. I love frying them or baking them, gently stuffed with fresh ricotta and a little anchovy fillet.

One of my favourite stories to tell is of the day my grandma made her own version: she stuffed the blossoms with ricotta, grated Parmigiano, minced prosciutto cotto, and chopped walnuts (yes—walnuts!), then dipped them in batter and fried them until golden. They were a little heavy, like dangerously delicious hand grenades—explosions of flavour and the perfect example of how nothing ever went to waste in her kitchen. Her cooking was deeply rooted in tradition, but now and then she delighted in humoring her curiosity, inventiveness, and resourcefulness.

June’s favorites from the garden, the hedgerows, and the fields

St. John’s water

The days around St John’s, on 24th June, have always been rich in meaning, woven with echoes of pagan traditions and ancient symbols.

There’s the gathering of green walnuts to make nocino, that thick, inky-black liqueur you sip by the fire in autumn, as dark as a starless night. And the Water of St John: a basin filled with water, where herbs and wildflowers—especially iperico, St John’s Wort—are left to steep overnight. In the morning, you wash your face with the fragrant water to preserve your beauty for the year ahead.

This is a ritual I’ve been keeping for over ten years, and now I love sharing it with Livia, teaching her the names of wildflowers, the powerful energy of the shortest night of the year, and the quiet beauty of repeating a ritual, year after year, simply for the joy of marking the passage of time and nurturing her growing awareness of the world around her. We welcome summer together. 

Chamomile

Then, there are evening walks through the countryside, collecting chamomile after the oak grove, just where the wheat field begins.

I’ve always thought of chamomile as an infusion with magical powers. In winter, after dinner, I would stir a teaspoon of honey into a steaming cup of chamomile tea. I’d drink it hot, and it would lull me to sleep. If taken lukewarm, with a squeeze of lemon juice, it would chase away my fears, and the ghosts awakened by the tolling of the bell tower that marked every hour while I was staying in San Gimignano with my aunt for a short holiday. I missed my mum and my own bed, but that chamomile smelled like home.

It’s still my favourite drink in the cold season. During the day, while I write or cook, I add a teaspoon of dried chamomile flowers to a teapot and fill it to the brim with boiling water. The flowers bloom, their yellow heads bringing a ray of sunshine to even the greyest, rainiest day. I sip it slowly. It warms me from the inside out, and it still tastes of comfort, of home. In the evening, after dinner, a cup of chamomile still sends me off to sleep, just like it did when I was little.

But it would be a shame to relegate chamomile to the role of a cosy winter drink. I enjoy it in summer, too—warm or cold. Try a jug of chamomile infusion with a handful of ice cubes, a few sprigs of fresh mint, and slices of lemon or ginger. It’s refreshing and fragrant.

The last step I was missing was bringing chamomile into the kitchen. I often use dried rose petals, lavender, or even elderflower to infuse cream or milk for desserts, but this time, I chose chamomile. The result is a panna cotta that captures the magic of early summer. Get the recipe here.

What about you? What’s been cooking in your kitchen this June? I’d love to hear your stories—reply to this email or leave a comment.

Ten zucchini (and zucchini blossom) recipes to fall in love with this summer

• Fried zucchini blossoms. Fry them on the spot, leave them just one or two minutes in a dish lined with kitchen paper, then enjoy them standing, all around the dish, in a new modern ritual made ​​of murmurs of pleasure, small surprised exclamations when you bite into the melted mozzarella under the crisp crust and happy eyes of those who savour one of their favourite dishes.

• Baked stuffed squash blossoms. I used to think the only possible way of stuffing squash blossoms was with a piece of fresh mozzarella and an anchovy fillet. Then one day, at the beginning of the new cooking class season, I found myself with lush squash blossoms, fresh sheep ricotta, and no desire to fry (quite unusual for me, I have to admit it).

• Zucchini carbonara. Yes, I know, there’s just one traditional, original carbonara, and that is made with guanciale, the cured cheek of the pig. But I like to make this lighter summer version, a carbonara with zucchini and a few fresh mint leaves. You can make it while the pasta water is boiling: quick, simple, seasonal, and vibrant.

• Zucchini cacio e pepe sauce for pasta. It might sound like a clash of flavours, but it is actually the perfect summer pasta dish that ticks all the boxes. Choose your favourite fresh pasta - we tried it with homemade pici and with mint laminated tagliatelle - but even dry pasta like spaghetti and rigatoni would work, and cook a glorious summer dish inspired by the best seasonal produce. No, you probably won’t find this in a restaurant, but this would be easily found in many households, especially when the zucchini season is at its peak and you need yet one more recipe to cook them.

• Pasta with zucchini and saffron. While the pasta is cooking undisturbed, prepare the zucchini dressing: cook the zucchini already cut into cubes, to save time, in a small saucepan with broth or hot water. Drain the zucchini and add the saffron and a handful of fresh mint leaves, then blend everything with a splash of cream until you get a delicate purée.

• Squash blossom risotto. This risotto has the smell of summer mornings in the vegetable garden when the squash blossoms are still open and fresh, and the herbs are still enjoying the balmy air of the night. I picked squash blossoms, a zucchini for the stock, a bunch of herbs, and headed for the kitchen.

• Tuna-stuffed round zucchini. The secret is using part of the zucchini pulp for the filling, chopped and sautéd with olive oil and garlic, as it adds moisture to the tuna and breadcrumb mixture. We normally use Parmigiano Reggiano, but feel free to use any sharp cheese you have on hand.

• Zucchini blossom and potato casserole. Layers of thinly sliced potatoes, zucchini blossoms, mozzarella, eggs and goat cheese, and then fresh herbs such as basil and chives, make this zucchini blossom and potato casserole a perfect main dish for a summer dinner. You can also make it in advance: reheat it just before serving. As in the case of an eggplant parmigiana, it gains a better taste and texture.

• Torta salata with zucchini and ricotta. You’ll find here zucchini, tons of fresh herbs, ricotta, and lemon zest. Make this pie with whatever you have at hand, use it to finish the odd vegetables left in the bottom of your fridge, or the remaining of a cheese platter. Bind everything with 2 eggs, and there you are: the best representation of the Italian torta salata, something in between a quiche and a savoury tart.

• Bread-stuffed zucchini and peppers. When it comes to stuffing vegetables, round zucchini are the best, as they are the perfect vessel for a hearty bread filling. This recipe, anyway, works also with long zucchini: cut them lengthwise and carve out a boat to stuff. If you cannot find mandarin-sized peppers, you can use 4 more zucchini.