The day I took a chance and change my life

Celebrating 14 years of teaching cooking classes

This month I’m celebrating 14 years of teaching cooking classes. It was not the path I had envisioned when I decided to pursue a marketing and communication career. I didn’t have a culinary degree, and I was the first in my family to leave a 9 to 5 job to venture into the unknown, scaring realm of self-employment. Yet, I had a feeling it could actually work, I firmly believed I was meant to work with food and English, two of my greatest passions.

Fourteen years later, here we are: I work with Tommaso Galli—my best friend, husband, colleague, and father of our daughter—and Juls’ Kitchen is our family business: we teach cooking classes in our cooking studio in the Tuscan countryside between Siena and Florence, and we meet the loveliest people through the year.

To celebrate this milestone, I’m sharing a piece of memoir I have written years ago during a memoir writing workshop. I’m so glad I took the time to research all the details, because that afternoon is still impressed in my heart, as the chat I had that night with my friend and mentor judy witts francini who has always supported my projects and who pushed me to give this new career a go.

- Go, quit your job, you have to teach cooking classes.-

And so I did.

I rolled the spinach and ricotta gnudi to the edge of the cutting board, then tipped them in the boiling water and waited. I intensely stared at the traces they had left in the flour.

Why, of all the dishes I could do, had I chosen gnudi for my very first cooking class?

The day before, on my way back from the office, I had met Brandon and Lisa, an Australian couple on holiday in the apartment my parents used to rend during the summer, the very same house that now I am lucky to call home. They were the kind of curious tourists who aren't content to tick off a list of activities and landmarks when they come to Tuscany—the Duomo in Florence, Piazza del Campo in Siena, the cypress trees of the Val d'Orcia—but happily stop to chat, to ask about you, what you read, how you live. I looked forward to those chance encounters thirsting for internationality, dying to speak English and test my improvements after a year long English course I was attending after work.

They were waiting for me outside in the garden, sitting at the white wrought-iron table peeling off from the years, under the acacia tree. It was May, the air was redolent of honey, and a snowfall of dried acacia blossoms, small as popcorn, had created a carpet on which we were now walking, in a subdued rustle.

- Giulia, do you know anyone who teaches Italian cooking classes? -

I had a sudden realization: the Sundays spent in the kitchen making ravioli, intoxicating myself with the buttery scent of shortcrust pastry, the cookbooks piled on the bed… I was searching for a new life, and this opportunity that happened by chance, but had been sought with perseverance, could be the beginning of a change.

When I had started my cooking blog two years earlier, I had only done it to satisfy the need to have something of my own, to have a place where I could give vent to a passion that was growing at an unexpected speed. The idea that blogging, and cooking above all, could become a job was far removed from my everyday life of employee and communications graduate.

As the months went by, though, the blog had changed. I had dedicated myself to this new activity with enthusiasm, I had discovered that I was good at writing and photography after all, despite what I was constantly reminded in the office. The blog was no longer just a refuge, but a foot in the door, through which I could dream of a different life.

Teaching a class in a villa, circa 2010

The idea of pursue a new career in the food world was no longer so remote. I just needed a sign, something to give me confidence and make me take the first step. The moment had arrived.

The next day I spent my eight hours in the office with a lightness in my heart I had not felt in a long time. In an unexpected burst of optimism, I even smiled at my boss.

At six o'clock, sharp I rang Brandon and Lisa's doorbell. Wrapped in a stiff cotton apron, which acted as a shield against my insecurities, I climbed those stairs I knew so well—the stairs I know climb daily to get home—with a bag bursting with fresh ingredients.

During a cooking class, you always start with dessert: we were going to make tiramisu. It was no coincidence that it was also one of my favourite desserts; I wanted to start with something that would give me courage, and mascarpone combined with coffee has always had that power.

As the light in the flat on the first floor grew brighter and drew sharp shadows on the kitchen table, I put the moka on the stove and began to explain the recipe for tiramisu.

How many times had I made it? I knew the recipe by heart, my mum had taught it during one of those Sunday mornings when we would prepare it together for lunch, me climbing on the kitchen stool with an apron as along as a nightgown, her standing next to me, holding the brown glass bowl, a fixture in the eighties kitchens: a tablespoon of sugar for each yolk, egg whites whipped until stiff, mascarpone, a dash of dark coffee.

Teaching a class in my mum’s kitchen, 2012

Taken by emotion, though, I get all the proportions wrong and tell Lisa to weigh one hundred grams of sugar for each egg. There. I've said it. I can't go back, it would make a bad impression…

Dissolving that sugar proved to be a tougher task than expected. But then came the mascarpone added in dense spoonfuls, the whisk, the wooden spoon, and the gestures now known by heart, the puffs of cocoa powder, the ladyfingers soaking in coffee, becoming heavy and surrendering, the crunch of dark chocolate broken into crispy shards.

I stashed the tiramisu it in the fridge in mum's porcelain cups, those with the shiny golden rim and the delicate foot. The tiramisu was gone.

The time had come for gnudi. As the name implies (gnudi means naked in Italian), they are the filling of ravioli—fresh ricotta, boiled and sautéed spinach, grated pecorino cheese—stripped from the pasta encasing. I had accumulated enough practice and confidence to be able to teach ravioli without fear of disaster, but gnudi was a different matter.

Gnudi are subject to so many variables that can compromise their realization: a too wet ricotta, spinach that hasn’t been squeezed enough, too much flour, not enough flour, a bad day. Why I had chosen gnudi was still a mystery, but in that moment I relied on all the tutelary deities of my family: my great-grandmother Pia, who fed a farmyard full of peasants gathered for the harvest; my grandmother Marcella, who would still invite us all for lunch every Thursday at the age of ninety with a carefully laid out table; my mother, who never had a particular flair for cooking, but who taught me that feeding people is an act of pure love.

We roll the gnudi in the flour, some small, round, perfect, others larger and lumpy, that don’t pirouette in the plate like the others. Our hands are green and sticky, covered in dough and flour, but they seem to have found a rhythm that makes them dance in time.

The water is boiling, it is time to cook gnudi. I push them to the edge of the plate, then flick them into the pot: they plunge into the water and disappear like a diver performing a perfect Olympic dive, without a single splash. Now we wait. Will they rise to the surface, dancing among the bubbles and clouds of flour, or will they melt in the bottom, in the secret depths of the salted water?

Those very few minutes seemed like forever, I was contemplating possible excuses, alternatives, a daring escape down the stairs. I made my prayers. I wore the clothes of a fortune teller, linking the success of that recipe to a prophecy of happiness: if they surface, my life will finally change.

A flicker on the surface, a glimmer in my heart, and then there they were, light, elegant, sprouting like spring flowers. I felt that I had found my path, and the courage to follow it. Cooking could be my new profession. After all, the gnudi had come to the surface.

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Want to reproduce that menù? Here you can find the recipes:

• spinach and ricotta gnudi

• tiramisù (classic recipe from the blog)

• strawberry tiramisu

To celebrate this milestone, if you attended one of our cooking classes, would you like to share a memory or the recipe you kept cooking once back at home?

The fabulous group of women that visit almost every year with Locas por el Mundo with chef Juliana Lopez May

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If you haven’t, come join us in one of our cooking classes!

Our calendar is slowly filling up, almost 400 people have already booked a class this year, and there are only a few openings left for the summer.

Every meal will be an excuse to travel through Tuscany thanks to local recipes, memories, and stories. Learn more about our cooking classes here.

We also launched our 3-day Seasonal Cooking Masterclass, for a deep dive into Italian cuisine.

These masterclasses are thought to highlight the seasonality of local produce, recipes, food traditions, and cultural habits. Learn more about the Three-day Masterclass here.

2024 Masterclass Dates

• 19-21 June 2024 [2 spots left]

• 25-26 September 2024 [SOLD OUT]

• 13-15 November 2024 – [6 spots left]

• 11-13 December 2024 – [6 spots left]