What to expect from Letters from Tuscany in 2024
What to expect from Letters from Tuscany in 2024
Monthly Cook-Alongs, Monthly Seasonal Cooking Class Menu, and an Italian Cookbook Club, plus the story of four notebooks....
Ciao, welcome back, and Happy New Year dear friends!
Over the past two weeks, we took an improvised break from Substack due to a dreadful flu—even though it feels like I’ve been dragging a nasty cough for months and months—and to a long-awaited trip to Salento to visit Tommaso’s family and breath in the brackish sea air. It is universally acknowledged that sea air cures everything, isn’t it?
If Christmas and the last days of the year were extremely intimate and low-key, the new year began with a flight to reach our home away from home in Salento: family, favourite spots for breakfast, good ingredients, a blinding light and the sea everywhere you go.
We slept, a lot. We ventured into a scientific quest to find the best pasticciotto in Salento—at the moment Pasticceria Natale in Lecce is the best we had so far—, we took day trips to visit neighboring towns such as Galatina and Nardò—I fell in love with Nardò, and I started dreaming about spending a couple of months there to properly learn the local cuisine. On Thursday morning, we went to Porto Cesareo for the weekly market, where every year I buy my provisions of capers, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, almonds and local wild oregano for the year.
Salento, we’ll be back soon, it is a promise.
I want to start the new year by sharing the story of my four new notebooks. Any stationery lover out there will understand my excitement at ushering in the new year with pristine notebooks, and good white paper brimming with possibilities.
In December, I picked four new notebooks and kept them on my desk for weeks, anticipating the pleasure of writing down the first cooking class dates in my brand new diary or jotting down the plot of a letter for you in my blue notebook, the one with constellations all over its cover. This is where today’s newsletter was actually born. There’s something freeing in writing with your best pen on good paper, it makes your thoughts flow as never happens when I type at my computer.
For the first time, I picked also a small weekly meal planner.
Every night our dinners with Livia resemble a nightmare more than a peaceful, soul-enriching family meal time, as she is the phase when NO is the most frequent answer to my invitations to try—just try!—some of the food I spent hours lovingly preparing it for her.
As this new year will bring also a new project—hence the fourth notebook and I’ll tell you about it in a minute—I felt the need to remove at least one reason for stress from the equation, clearing some space in my mind, balancing our meals favouring vegetable-forward dishes. So far, so good. As I’m writing, I’m roasting some carrots in the oven with olive oil and sage leaves, and they will be our dinner with chickpea cake (a fabulous Tuscan street food, similar to the Ligurian farinata. If you have Cucina Povera, it’s on page 179) and some rice.
Back to my notebook, my fourth, a yellow-covered, bee-patterned spiral notebook. This is where I will write our next cookbook, our 2024 project.
Our publisher accepted our proposal—which you helped us shape and perfect by answering these questions here—. It will be a book about a theme dear to my heart, that will also inform our year here at Letters from Tuscany. I’m excited, and sometimes at night, right before falling asleep, I find myself smiling at the idea of pouring my heart into another cookbook, the seventh, of working exactly on the food I am craving and that best represents the way we like to eat now.
Speaking of books… If you still don’t have our latest cookbook, Cucina Povera, here on the blog you can find all the links to pick your copy. When possible, support your local independent bookstores.
This brings also to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany.
We recently celebrated three years of weekly letters here on Substack, three years of community and commitment to good food and interesting stories. We sent the first letter on January 1st, 2021, and now we have more than 12K subscribers from all over the world, including those who read Lettere dalla Toscana, our Italian publication.
This is where we will keep sharing our best content, new delicious recipes inspired by regional Italian traditions, long-form essays, stories, interviews, cookbook updates, foodie guides to our favourite areas of Tuscany, and much more.
Why do I like Substack so much? Substack is not just a newsletter, is a community of writers (and readers), where I am constantly motivated to do better. I give myself permission to write about kitchen failures and disasters, the different varieties of tomatoes in a Tuscan market, cookbook crushes, the foodie guide to my hometown, and the story of a marble table.
I still have to write about our new home kitchen—where I’ve been cooking for the last six months—, share our foodie guides for Siena, Lucca and Volterra, and the recipes I’ve been working on recently.
Here I am the food writer I want to be because I’m not waiting for a magazine to hire me to write, I reclaimed my space and time to do this.
And you, who read our newsletter, subscribed, commented, and shared our articles, you granted us time and resources to write. You hold me accountable.
So thank you for choosing Letters from Tuscany, for giving us time and attention in a world so full of noise, catching videos, and beautiful newsletters written by the best authors. It means the world to us.
Along with our free newsletters, available for everyone, this is what we have planned for our paid subscribers in 2024. You are precious: with your subscription, you support us directly and keep us going!
Give yourself and your loved ones a year brimming with joy and good food, insider guides to Tuscany, honest, reliable, Italian recipes, and monthly cook-alongs, to build your confidence in the kitchen.
Time of sales in Italy. We created a special offer for you, a 15% off for one year, valid until January 15th.
Monthly Cook-Alongs
We will meet once a month for our online cook-along and live talk. We started with a small number of participants, but now our Cook Along is growing and getting very animated. Our monthly cook-along is a very informal, fun, chatty moment when we cook together, but you can join just to have a chat, ask questions, share stories, or simply listen while having a good cup of tea (or glass of wine, according to which time zone you are in!)
Listening to your requests, we moved our Cook Along to Zoom, so a recording of the class will be available for all paid subscribers after the event, and it will be easier to attend the Cook Along even though you live Down Under.
Mark your calendar for the upcoming cook-alongs!
SUNDAY, January 21st at 9.00 pm CET - 3.00 pm EST - 12.00 pm PST. We’ll make gnudi—spinach and ricotta dumplings— and ricotta gnocchi and you will discover how easy they are!
SUNDAY, February 11th at 9.00 pm CET - 3.00 pm EST - 12.00 pm PST. We’ll make two Tuscan carnival treats: cenci—Tuscan fried dough rugs—and rice fritters.
These events are designed for those who subscribed to Letters from Tuscany: we’re slowly building friendships and shared memories and having lots of fun!
Monthly Seasonal Cooking Class Menu
In the past year, I’ve been writing all the menus we create together during our cooking classes on a little black book. We sit together at the local café or in our studio, we sip a cup of coffee, we look at the seasonal produce we purchased at the market, and we come up with a whole menu, from appetizers to desserts. Every time is different. There are recurrent dishes and recipes improvised with pantry staples, classics and family favourites.
Once a month, I’ll be sharing a menu from our classes, with photos taken during the morning spent in the kitchen, notes and ideas.
Think of it as a 5-course menu you can cook for a group of friends in about three hours. It will often involve fresh pasta and lots of seasonal vegetables.
If you’re planning a trip to Tuscany and want to attend a cooking class with us, the bookings for our 2024 season are now open! Book now, as we have fewer openings than last year, as we will be busy working on our cookbook, too.
Learn more about our cooking classes here.
Italian Cookbook Club
Starting this February, we will host an Italian Cookbook Club, to introduce you to new and old cookbooks about Italian cuisine, ingredients, and traditions. It won’t be all about the latest trends, but we will pick good, reliable, timeless cookbooks worth adding to your collection.
We will discuss the books and recipes in the Chat here on Substack, where you will be able to upload photos of the recipes you picked and tried, notes, and comments. At the beginning of the month, I will also share one or two recipes here in the newsletter for you to cook from and to give a sense of the book.
If you want to take part in the Italian Cookbook Club, these are the books we will read, comment on, and love in the following months.
FEBRUARY. Viola Buitoni. Italy by Ingredient: Artisanal Foods, Modern Recipes.
MARCH. Olivia Cavalli, Stagioni: Contemporary Italian Cooking to Celebrate the Seasons.
APRIL. Fabrizia Lanza, The Food of Sicily: Recipes from a Sun-Drenched Culinary Crossroads.
Love the idea! I can't wait for more info about the Italian Coobook Club :)
Ooh, the Italian Cookbook Club looks interesting. 👀