Frances Mayes - The Tuscan sun cookbook : recipes from our Italian kitchen

The choreography of the kitchenI peel, you scrape, wine spills, bag splits, beans simmer, sink slurps, petals fall, flour drifts, crust splits, aromas spread, lights flicker, chocolate melts, glass shatters, sauce thickens, finger bleeds, cheese ripens, crumbs fall, sweat drips, spoon bangs, meat glistens, oil spatters, wine breathes, garlic smashes, lettuces float, silver shines, apron snags, you sneeze, I sing oh, my love, my darling, and dough rises in soft moons the size of my cupped hand as planet earth tilts us toward dinner.

FROM Every Day in Tuscany

Copyright 2012 by Frances Mayes and Edward Mayes
Photographs copyright 2012 by Steven Rothfeld

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

C LARKSON P OTTER is a trademark and P OTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mayes, Frances, and Edward Mayes.
The Tuscan sun cookbook / Frances Mayes and Edward Mayes; photographs by Steven Rothfeld. 1st ed.
1. Cooking, ItalianTuscan style. 2. Cookbooks. I. Mayes, Edward Kleinschmidt. II. Title.
TX723.2.T86M394 2012
641.59555dc22 2011013195

eISBN: 978-0-307-95386-5

Design by Marysarah Quinn
Photographs by Steven Rothfeld

v3.1

This book is one long toast, cin-cin, to near and dear Tuscan friends, who have shared their creative improvisations on passed-down, hallowed recipes. Early in our time here, we met Giuseppina De Palme, called Giusi. A natural cook, she is a mother of two who lives far in the country in a casa colonica with her husband and his parents. Her family feasts initiated us into the eight-hour meals so common in the Tuscan countryside. She now owns her own idyllic agriturismo, but she continues to invite us to lavish feasts. Her generosity and her passion for cooking inspire every meal we prepare. Later, we met Gilda Di Vizio, Giusis sister-in-law. She is equally inventive and accomplishes more in a morning than I can in a day. She brings us armfuls of sunflowers, meat from her livestock, jars of fig jam, and baskets of zucchini flowers because she knows we americani adore them fried. Gildas life force, raucous sense of humor, and earth-mother knowledge of the land all brighten the skies over Cortona.

As we got to know our neighbors and their friends, we felt the inexpressible joy of being included on a regular basis in the rounds of celebration that define the days of the local people. Our friends are cooks, engineers, winemakers, plumbers, gym teachers, woodcutters, doctors, fashionistas, electricians, police chiefs, writers, and the local aristocracy. As foreigners, we are freed from the bounds of profession and class. We eat everywherein the contessas frescoed villa and the sheepherders stone cottage.

During our years here, we have accumulated notebooks of recipes from our friends and from trattorie and restaurants where we eat regularly. Placido Cardinali and Fiorella Badini, our neighbors, are the truest gourmands I have met. I would like to have a head count of the number of people they entertain every year. When Ed is in Italy without me, Fiorella walks over and says, I hope youre not thinking of eating dinner alone. Thats not good for you. He finds himself over at La Casita every night, with Plari, as her husband is called, grilling sausages, or a pigeon hes raised behind the house, and Fiorella making the tagliatelle.

The stylish and fun Baracchi family, Riccardo and his wife, Silvia Regi, with their son Benedetto, own the sybaritic country inn and restaurant Il Falconiere. The hospitality of the family reveals the depth of their natural joy in living. What feasts they produce! I was flattered when Silvia named her school Cooking Under the Tuscan Sun. Silvia is a cutting-edge chef with intact, deep country roots. Whatever I think I know how to do, Silvia can knock it up a notch. Their inn is a second home for us. Riccardo makes highly prized wines and a Champagne-method sparkling wine that inspires Ed to write sonnets.

Our connections to the place multiplied a few years ago when we restored a twelfth-century stone house, Fonte delle Foglie (Font of Leaves) on Monte SantEgidio. There we have an ever-expanding vegetable garden and orchard. We gather chestnuts from the forest, fight the invasive wild boar constantly, and love the owl calls at night. The lights of Cortona in the distance seem far away from our mountain perch.

During the long restoration, we built a bread oven and grill near the kitchen. Our neighbors, Domenica Italiani and her exuberant son, Ivan, taught us the mysteries of our brick-domed oven and how to turn out 30 to 40once we even made 65pizzas for hungry guests. Domenica has an outdoor kitchen at her house, where she constantly bottles tomatoes, puts up wild cherries, and makes vats of quince and fig jams. Ivan, a trained chef, makes scrumptious desserts and sometimes drops off a blackberry crostata at Fonte. Do they taste better because theyve baked in a wood-fired oven? I like to stop by their house because theres always something to taste on their red wood-fired stove and Domenica is likely to be rolling out the pasta for lunch. The tiny grandmother Annette goes out to gather eggs. Ivan rushes in from his job and dives right in. The noise level rises, the scents of baking rabbit, sizzling pancetta, and lemon tart crowd the kitchen. The Italiani in the kitchenalls well in the world.

Cin-cin, my friends, and mille grazie.