(A quick update from Agritourismo Cesani - a working farm/winery and BnB near San Gimignano in Tuscany - Wow!! So beautiful.)
Brenna and I left Cinque Terre and drove to Lucca to attend a 5-hour "pastas-and-sauces" cooking class with Chef Paulo Monte. Then we biked around Lucca and met up with Mike and Sara (who hiked more of CT) for the drive to San Gimignano further into Tuscany. Holy cow - beautiful and incredible!
Cooking class with the fabulous Chef Paulo Monte (near Lucca)
Thank you to Janie for our previous cooking classes with Chef Paulo. This pastas and sauces class was fantastic - one of the highlights of the trip!
Chef Paulo Monte. He posed for 5 seconds and then we got cookin'
Making a sauce (he's throwing salt in)
Vegetable stock (used in most sauces).
We had one quick break but otherwise, we were all cooking for 4+ hours straight. Loved it!
Pastas were put aside (and then we heated them back up to finish -typically with parmesan!
Yes...this many sauces!
Making pasta! (Spinach-green, a wheat, a white, and a black - squid ink).
Brenna making ravioli. Perma-smile!
Pastas - with gnocchi in the middle.
Cooking the pastas
Making semifreddo - we actually did this first so it had time to freeze. (Sugar into syrup and a variety of nuts, in a food processor, whipped cream and other cream or milk. Thank goodness we have the recipe book!)
Holy yum.
Chef Paulo ate with us. He gave some good tips on Verona. The couple to Brenna's left run a BnB off the Camino de Santiago close to St. Jean!)
We had an hour to bike ride around and through Lucca to work off some of the pasta :))
We drove to San Gimignano through some beautiful Tuscany hill towns and vineyards. Wowwwww.
View from our BnB
View of San Gimignano (hill town, towers)
A pan at sunset on our way to dinner in San Gimignano.
(Our tiny panda,vineyards, San G in the distance to the right)
Inside the walls of San Gimignano.
Sara and Brenna are looking for the recommended soup restaurant marked on our map ;)
Stunning San Gimignano at dusk. Definitely a more magical feel than mid day.
Dinner on the square ;)
A day trip to Volterra
We took the scenic route to Volterra that morning (over a forested mountain) and back into the vineyard hill towns. We toured Volterra through lunch and then dropped Sara and Mike off (in the rain!) to catch a bus to Florence while Brenna and I motored on to our next agritourismo south of Bologna.
Sunrise on the farm (at Agritourism Cesani). These 2 photos are from Sara, who woke up before the storm moved in.
Rain storm moving in. Perfect temps, breeze, views. It was ridiculous.
Agritourismo Cesani
Agritourismo view of San Gimignano (zoomed in)
Volterra!
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