Sarah Fioroni shares stories of family traditions and daily life as well as recipes in A Family Farm in Tuscany: Recipes and Stories from Fattoria Poggio Alloro. Fioroni provides a month-by-month glimpse of farm living as well as seasonal recipes that are simple yet so delicious, and easy to prepare in your kitchen. Three generations of Fioronis continue to work the land using age-old practices and sustainable agriculture, growing a bounty of fruits, vegetables, cereal crops, olives, and grapes for their award-winning wines. They also keep bees, produce saffron, and raise chickens, Chianina cattle, and pigs, the basis of homemade prosciuttos and salamis. The book is illustrated with hundreds of color photographs depicting the landscapes and crops, as well as the family at work and at the table. The farm is also a popular agriturismo destination, giving visitors an opportunity to stay overnight, participate in various farming activities, and revel in the tastes of freshly prepared food and artisanal farm products.
Over the past several years, "the American in Tuscany" has become a literary subgenre. Launched by the phenomenal success of Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, bookstores now burgeon with nimble, witty accounts of this clash in cultures-Americans trying to do American things in Italy and bumping against a brick wall of tradition.Too Much Tuscan Sun is Dario's, a Tuscan guide whose client base is predominantly American, account of some of his more remarkable customers, from the obsessive and the oblivious to the downright lunatic.
Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites readers back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy. Having spent her summers in Tuscany for the past several years, Frances Mayes relished the opportunity to experience the pleasures of primavera, an Italian spring. A sabbatical from teaching in San Francisco allowed her to return to Cortona—and her beloved house, Bramasole—just as the first green appeared on the rocky hillsides. Bella Tuscany, a companion volume to Under the Tuscan Sun, is her passionate and lyrical account of her continuing love affair with Italy. Now truly at home there, Mayes writes of her deepening connection to the land, her flourishing friendships with local people, the joys of art, food, and wine, and the rewards and occasional heartbreaks of her villa's ongoing restoration. It is also a memoir of a season of change, and of renewed possibility. As spring becomes summer she revives Bramasole's lush gardens, meets the challenges of learning a new language, tours regions from Sicily to the Veneto, and faces transitions in her family life. Filled with recipes from her Tuscan kitchen and written in the sensuous and evocative prose that has become her hallmark, Bella Tuscany is a celebration of the sweet life in Italy. Now with an excerpt from Frances Mayes's latest southern memoir, Under Magnolia.
Take a private tour of awe-inspring Tuscan villas, houses, abbeys, and castles that introduce the beauty and deep-rooted culture of Italy's most famous region. Here are 25 dramatic dwellings, expertly transformed into modern homes. More than 400 color photographs reveal the splendor of period furniture, collections, and architecture. "...brings the Tuscan sights and scents alive."--Publisher's Weekly.
A celebration of Tuscan farmhouse style, with practical advice on how to bring the look home. For anyone who has ever dreamed of living under the Tuscan sun, Italian Rustic is the next best thing--a step-by-step guide to recreating the romance and appeal of the weathered Italian farmhouse. This nuts-and-bolts guide to building Italian-style walks the reader through all the elements that make the rustic Italian home so unique, from the hand-laid stone walls to the artisanal stucco wall finishes. Author Elizabeth Minchilli, an American design writer based in Rome and Tuscany, received dozens of questions from readers after publishing her last book, Artisan's Restoring a Home in Italy. The queries went beyond the usual searches for fabric and couches. "People were hungry to know how terra-cotta tiles were laid, or how fireplaces were built," she says. Italian Rustic, researched with the help of her Italian architect husband, is the user-friendly result: a book that explains, in clear text accompanied by photographs and drawings, how to lay a tile floor a la Italiana, or add a Tuscan-style pergola to any garden. With more than 300 stunning photographs shot on location in Tuscany and Umbria, the book contains profiles of local artisans, engaging text on how the farmhouse style evolved, and targeted advice on how Americans can find Italian-style building materials and craftsmen close to home. This essential sourcebook will appeal to anyone building an addition or an entire house from scratch, or for homeowners who want to add just a touch of Italian style to their houses.
The internationally recognized authority on Italian food and cooking brings together more than 150 authentic recipes from his native province. Known for his painstaking research, Bugialli draws on the recipes of old Tuscan families, early printed cookbooks, and field research to create an important and exciting collection of dishes. 150 full-color photographs.
One of the country's top food writers draws on her years of Tuscan living to uncover the essence and origins of this unique region's authentic home cooking in a marvelous collection of 100 recipes. Eight-page color photo insert. 25 photos.
A sumptuous escape to the sensual culinary flavors of the Italian countryside, with more than a hundred recipes for the home cook. In a wild, undiscovered corner of Tuscany called Maremma, boars roam the hillsides, olive trees stand like sentries, and fennel perfumes the air. This landscape yields its own cuisine—rustic dishes that let their seasonal ingredients shine through. There is no better place to learn the secrets of this cuisine than the Castello di Vicarello. This twelfth century fairy-tale castle is now an exclusive resort where the proprietor, Aurora Berti, prepares meals based on the garden. Here, Aurora presents the many recipes she has developed over the past decade by sharing with local peasant women and drawing from her own family’s traditions. Organized by season, this charming cookbook immerses the reader in the daily rhythms of the land. The dishes are accompanied by sidebars and photos that convey the story of this place: pruning the vineyards in winter, picking asparagus in spring, drying tomatoes for sauce in summer, and hunting porcini in fall. The recipes burst with flavor while remaining simple: black kale crostini, radicchio and walnut salad, carbonara with favas, roast pork with apples, peach crostata. My Tuscan Kitchen: Seasonal Recipes from the Castello di Vicarello is the next best thing to taking a trip to this magical country. "Damn good stuff comes out of this cucina."--GQ "Travel like royalty this season [at] southern Tuscany's Castello di Vicarello."--Vogue "This castle is exactly where Rapunzel should be letting down her hair. It's amazing--unusual and full of character."--Tatler "Heaven!" --The New York Times Travel Magazine "If I have only one life to live, let me live a good part of it at the Castello di Vicarello."--Richard David Story, editor-in-chief, Departures "Castello di Vicarello offers some of the most spectacular food in Italy, thanks to Aurora Baccheschi Berti. Lovingly prepared with local ingredients, Aurora's dishes succeed in transporting her guests to the perfect state of bliss."--Julian Niccolini, Managing Partner, The Four Seasons Restaurant, New York "We still talk about the fried zucchini flowers, and the dark cured ham made from boars reared on the estate. I quickly realized the only proper answer to 'What would you like for lunch' was 'Whatever you would like to cook!'"--Ed Smith, The Times, London
Pip and Shannon dreamed of living the good life. They wanted to slow down, grow their own food and spend more time with the people they love. But jobs and responsibilities got in the way: their chooks died, their fruit rotted, and Pip ended up depressed and in therapy. So they did the only reasonable thing - they quit their jobs, pulled the children out of school and went searching for la dolce vita in Italy. One Italian Summer is a warm, funny and poignant story of a family's search for a better way of living, in the homes and on the farms of strangers. Pip sleeps in a tool shed, feasts under a Tuscan sun, works like a tractor in Calabria and, eventually, finds the good life she's always dreamed of - though not at all where she expected.
