A Year in a Tuscan Cooking School: September

Savouring the in-between season: 10 recipes to celebrate new apples, pears, grapes, and green tomatoes

Ciao and welcome to the eighth chapter of A year in a Tuscan Cooking School. Each month, I open the doors of my cooking school to share a more intimate glimpse into daily life in Tuscany: its flavours, its people, and the gentle rhythm of the seasons. It’s a slow journey, like leafing through the pages of a favourite cookbook.

If you’re new to the series, catch up on what we’ve been cooking through the year — from hearty January soups to sun-kissed August vegetables — right here: January, February, March, April, May, June, July and August.

SEPTEMBER

I wait all year for that unofficial fifth season that lingers between summer and autumn, those weeks when the harvest of summer produce is still abundant: crates of the sweetest tomatoes, basketfuls of tender green beans, untouched by relentless heatwaves. But there’s a slight change in the light, a golden flicker in the air, and new ingredients begin to appear on the market stalls. September brings clusters of sugary grapes – including those prized wine grapes we tuck into focaccia dough in Tuscany – rugged squashes, and the first harvest of local apples and pears.

It is still summer, but it is a time full of promises, a month-long nostalgic farewell to the good season, a feast of juicy tomato salads, sticky figs, a shower of basil in every dish, to imprint its heady aroma on all my senses, so I won’t miss it too much in the months to come, dominated by the woody scent of sage and rosemary.

September cooking classes

We resumed our classes in the second half of September, as school started again. We hosted 40 people from the US, Canada, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Colombia.

Along with our regular schedule of one-day experiences, we also held a class with a wonderful group from Untold Italy Tours, and another with Juliana Lopez May, an Argentinian chef who brings a large group of women every year with Locas for el Mundo. Hers is the liveliest, most chaotic, fun, and entertaining class of the year! It’s a joyful jumble of Italian, Spanish and English all mixed together, but in the end we all communicate through a shared language: our love for food.

We closed the month with our harvest masterclass–a lovely group of nine people who instantly became friends –and this is everything we cooked during our three days together.

Wednesday

After a relaxed breakfast at the local café, we shopped at the market for fruit, vegetables, and cheese. Then, we stopped at the butcher, and eventually we headed home to start cooking our feast.

• Raw porcini salad - thinly sliced porcini mushrooms (carpaccio, remember the name?) dressed with salt, pepper, lemon juice and calamint, topped with paper-thin pecorino.

• Panzanella, probably the last of the season, made with the sweetest tomatoes, crisp cucumber and celery, onions, and a shower of basil.

• An improvised salad made with discarded celery leaves, apples, creamy pecorino cheese and walnuts. On other occasions, I would call it a meal.

• Handmade cavatelli with a tomato sauce made from scratch using fresh tomatoes, aglione garlic, and basil (I’m using as much basil as possible, since the season is nearly over).

• A platter of porchetta and soppressata (the first of the season. Yes, charcuterie has a seasonality we should respect, too).

• Baked plums with sabayon.

Thursday

We started the day by cooking a vat of zolfini beans (small, yellowish beans produced in Casentino, prized for their exceptionally thin skin and melt-in-your-mouth, creamy texture) and a pot of vegetable stock, those basic recipes that, when made by the book, add so much flavour and serve as the backbone of a dish. We also started kneading the grape focaccia for Friday.

• Grilled radicchio on a creamy bean purée, drizzled with a punchy, vinegary salsa verde. Everyone loved it, but you’ll have to wait until next year for the recipe — it’s included in our upcoming book (huge spoiler!).

• Saffron risotto and ossobuco, both from Cucina Povera, two hearty, comforting dishes that introduced us to autumn, perfectly suited for a rainy day.

• Ricciarelli, almond cookies from Siena

Friday

• Fried zucchini flowers, probably the last of the season, just like the panzanella

• Bread-stuffed round zucchini, which made everyone fall in love with such a simple recipe, made with day-old bread

• Potato gnocchi, dressed with a slow simmered Tuscan ragù, my nonna’s recipe, a dish perfect for a family meal

• Roasted eggplants and squash

• Grape focaccia. As I couldn’t find wine grapes–the harvest here is almost finished–we chose some seedless Concord grapes, bursting with flavour. As I was missing the crunchy note given by the seeds, I scattered the focaccia with roughly chopped walnuts. I’ll do it again.

As we waved goodbye to September, we looked ahead to our final masterclass of the year in October – already fully booked! But don’t worry, a new season of masterclasses begins in March, and spots are filling up quickly. You can find all the details here.

Cook more, stay longer. Your invitation to Tuscany. 2026 cooking classes are here!

We’re also very excited for a special Masterclass in March — from Tuesday 3rd to Friday 6th — featuring two guest teachers who will guide us through the secrets of their own culinary traditions.

I’ll be joined in the kitchen by two dear friends and exceptional cooking teachers: Enrica Monzani from A Small Kitchen in Genoa, and Flavia Giordano, from SpaghettiABC. Together, we’ll guide you through a unique experience that blends our cultures, techniques, and favourite seasonal recipes. Along with our daily cooking classes, we’ll explore the countryside, visit local markets, go foraging with a local expert, and enjoy wine and olive oil tastings at Tenuta Mensanello, a working farm and agriturismo nestled in the Tuscan hills.

September’s favourites from the market, vegetable garden, and the hedgerows

As soon as summer is over, I start missing all those beautiful seasonal vegetables, and the morning strolls through the vegetable garden to pick something for lunch or dinner. As much as I love shopping for fruit and vegetables at the market, there’s nothing quite like picking your own tomatoes or choosing the ripest fig dangling from the highest branch.

As a result, my meals right now are overloaded with vegetables, as I can’t get enough of the last roasted eggplants and peppers, tomato salads (honestly, the tomatoes my mum grew in September were by far the sweetest of the season), or stewed green beans.

Green Tomatoes

My mum is an impatient gardener. When a tomato plant stops producing juicy, red tomatoes, she mercilessly pulls it out without a second thought, forgetting the late-season gift it still offers: tart, firm green tomatoes.

When the heat isn’t enough to ripen them, farmers embrace green tomatoes, turning them into delicious dishes to celebrate a fleeting season: fried green tomatoes with grapes, but also pickles, jams, or, one of my favourites, a creamy pesto for a bowl of pasta.

Grapes

Come September, everything in the countryside revolves around the grape harvest season: people dot the vineyards since the early morning, and big tractors brimming with grapes slow the traffic around the local wineries.

At the same time, heavy clusters of wine grapes appear on the market stalls, and bakeries add to their offer a seasonal treat, a sticky, sweet focaccia topped with jammy grapes and rosemary. It is the sign that the time of schiacciata con l’uva has come.

Apples

I’ve always had a soft spot for apples. Stewed apples are my comfort food in the evening: as soon as autumn arrives, I cook them with a squeeze of lemon juice and some cinnamon or star anise, then I curl up on the sofa and eat them slowly with a spoon, holding the cup as long as possible in my hands to warm myself up.

The apple olive oil cake is a recipe from my cooking repertoire, and certainly one of the most loved on the blog. The roasted pork loin with apples is one of the dishes that taught me how to feel confident in the kitchen and, later, helped me conquer Tommaso’s heart.

Baked apples are the first food I ate after Livia was born: I found in a little bowl of baked apples the food you crave when you are not feeling well, when you need an extra cuddle, a personal comfort food, a childhood memory that welcomed me into my new life as a grown-up, as a mother.

On the blog, you can also find my recipes for apple and smoked trout risotto, pork tenderloin medallions with apples, and apple strudel.

Apples have always been part of my imagination, my memories, my cooking repertoire, and one of my comfort foods.

Now it’s your turn. What’s been cooking in your kitchen this September? Have you embraced the in-between season too, with grapes, green tomatoes, or apples? Hit reply and share your stories. I read every single one.

Ten recipes for the in between season

• Pecorino cheese and pear crostoni. I reintroduced these pear and pecorino crostoni in the past weeks during our cooking classes, a seasonal appetizer that is substituting fried zucchini blossoms, tomato and mozzarella caprese salads, and prosciutto and melon.

• Bread-stuffed round zucchini and peppers. I made them often in September for us and for the classes. 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 simply use four additional zucchini.

• Green tomato pesto. You make it while the pasta is cooking, using those green tomatoes from your garden that just don’t want to get ripe. If you don’t have a vegetable garden, go to the market: among the ripe ones, now you can spot the green tomatoes, and it is often the farmers themselves who will tell you the best recipes to use them. Listen to them, that’s how I add new recipes to my repertoire!

• Fried green tomatoes with grapes. There are only five ingredients – green tomatoes, grapes, basil, garlic, and chilli – yet each one is essential. The pan-fried green tomatoes are meaty and fresh, the grapes add a delicate sweet note, the garlic, and the basil give an aromatic twist, and the chilli warms it up.

• Pork loin with apples and onions. If the Tuscan arista alla Fiorentina, roasted pork loin with herbs and white wine, was the traditional Sunday roast in our family, the roast pork loin with apples quickly became our favourite. Let’s face it: pork and apples are a marriage made in heaven.

• Grape focaccia. Schiacciata con l’uva (schiacciata is the Tuscan term for focaccia) belongs to that special category of enriched breads that celebrates various festivities by adding nuts, spices, and dried fruit to the dough.

• Apple olive oil cake. With the first new apples of the season, we already made a couple of apple olive oil cakes. It is moist, delicate, and full of apples, by far the favourite recipe from the blog archive.

• Frittelle di mele, apple fritters. I love the apple fritters simply dusted with sugar, or with a touch of cinnamon or grated lemon zest, to make them even more indulgent. You bite into the soft, mellow apples enshrined in a sugary batter, and finish licking up your fingers. They’re ideal as an afternoon snack, just as the crisp air invites brisk walks among falling leaves, or for dessert to end a Sunday family meal, perhaps with a silky puddle of vanilla custard on the side.

• Poached pears with mascarpone pastry cream. Over the years, I’ve grown fond of that light, delicate touch a fruit dessert gives to a meal, often a more balanced end than a slice of cake.

• September jam. You just need the fruit that ripens in September: the vine grapes – whether black or white, depending on what you have or is left over from the harvest -, freshly picked figs, sticky and sweet, and tiny wild apples. Combine everything and simmer until the fruit falls apart, giving the preserve the time it needs. Then add some sugar to make everything as sweet as honey and to preserve the jam for the following months in your pantry.