Italian cooking holidays

Truffles taste like the woods in which they live – each one is infused with the heady taste of the bark of the tree, the terroir, the climate in which they grow. When you are tasting food here, you are tasting the landscape; it’s what makes cooking holidays in Italy so special. Take Umbrian pecorino cheese (pecora means a female sheep) – in which you might be able to taste the Umbrian mountain pastures.

Italy was only unified in the 19th century and its mountainous terrain kept city states separate; regional variation is a strong part of its heritage. It’s something that makes cooking holidays extra interesting, as each region focuses on different ingredients and recipes. Milan, for instance, is known for risotto, whilst Tuscans eat a lot of beans – so many that they are known as mangiafagioli – bean eaters. Umbria consumes the most pork of any region, thanks to its river valleys, which are well suited to pig farming.

Not only does a cooking holiday give you a sense of place, but you are also tasting the world around you at a specific point in time. Italian cuisine uses a lot of vegetables, so seasons are important here – strawberries come in May, sunflowers bloom from June, when you can also find the summer truffle, also called scorzone; crocus flowers are harvested in autumn. What you eat depends on how it’s doing in the garden. “We might not even know two days before what we may be cooking,” Marina says.

When it comes to this seasonal, vegetable-forward cuisine, fresher is better, which is why staying at an agritourism business – known as an agriturismo in Italy – and learning cooking from your hosts is one of the best ways to do it.

These properties are working farms. Podere le Olle, for instance, produces its own olive oil. Staying in the Tuscan village of Roccatederighi with another of our cooking holiday partners, Cook Eat Discover, puts you within striking distance of a buffalo mozzarella farm and coastal rice farms.

“People are always amazed how much olive oil my husband uses,” says Marina. “We put it everywhere – in cooking, baking, as the final touch on a dish, over a salad.” Italy is the number one consumer of olive oil in the world. Small organic farms like Marina’s make and press their own – in fact, the tourism season stops because of it: “We will have no more groups this year, as we have to do the olive harvest in just of a couple of weeks.”

Olive oil, tomatoes, pasta: the greatest expressions of Italian cuisine are often its simplest. It means that, on the face of it, Italy’s culinary scene can be stultifyingly familiar. It’s one of the most adopted – and botched – cuisines in the world. Dried pasta exports well and ends up everywhere.

But whilst olive oil and pasta reign supreme, there’s a lot more to Italian cooking than its familiar staples. Rather than sweeping monocrops, small farms here used to farm a dizzying variety of lentils, beans, and ancient grains. “It is very important to preserve the biodiversity as it’s what Italy is famous for,” says Marina. “They say that we have so many varieties of grapes and apples, and that Italy is famous for so many types of grains and wheats.”

Some have died out, but a small number of producers are bringing them back.

“We buy our flour from a local mill,” says Marina. “They use the ancient grains which are farmed in very small-scale production – if they aren’t offered by mills like this, they’ll just disappear. You don’t find this flour made of this kind of wheat in the supermarket – you just don’t find it.”

There is a small bean called the fagiolina that you won’t find outside of Umbria. “It’s a very old bean grown mainly in the Trasimeno area. It’s very delicate and all the work to produce it is done by hand. I’m sure it would have disappeared years ago if it wasn’t for many efforts to reintroduce production.”

Close to Marina’s property is a crocus farm where, come October, the stamens of the flowers are picked, dried, and turned into saffron. The Italian Saffron Association is keen to keep it going and reach new audiences by promoting saffron as a trendy superfood.

Growers might be fighting a losing battle. Marina and her husband moved to Umbria in part for its wonderful climate. Unlike, for instance, far more popular neighbouring Tuscany, which is scorched yellow by the sun by August, the region of Umbria stays green all year round, and rarely gets too hot. But climate change is a new and worrying pressure that threatens both the type of crops that can be grown, and when they can arrive.

“We are very worried about climate change,” says Marina. “Over the last five years we haven’t had one good olive harvest.” Temperatures are getting higher. Their property doesn’t use air conditioning, but they are now forced to consider it for guests’ comfort. The seasons, which have so long marked the year’s recipes, are no longer dictating when crops appear. “We had tomatoes ripening in October; usually they’re finished by September.”

All this will change Umbria and Italy – a rupture in centuries of cooking traditions. But perhaps good changes will follow bad. “Hopefully people will come and be inspired to eat seasonably and live sustainably,” Marina adds.

The summer has ended, the scorzone has been snaffled, but under the soil, the even more precious white truffle is growing – a reminder that better times can be ahead.