Umbria is a quaint Italian city that is known for its lush landscape and locally produced cuisine. Tourists hoping to sample some of this cuisine can go restaurant-hopping or they can sign up for a cooking holiday and learn how to produce that fare themselves. Most cooking holidays don’t come cheap, but if you calculate out all the costs they cover you’ll see that you do get a lot for your money. Just be sure to pick a program that focuses on the type of cuisine, excursions and tastings you know you’ll want to experience while in Italy.
Cucina della Terra
The Cucina della Terra cooking vacation focuses on the regional cuisine that Umbria has to offer. This means students cook with lots of oils, pastas, wines and fresh vegetables. To complement the cooking skills that students will obtain in the kitchen, Cucina della Terra also takes students on numerous excursions that allow them to sample first-class cuisine and locate first-class ingredients. The class includes cheese, wine and olive oil tastings, as well as a truffle hunt that will test the students’ abilities to locate these delicacies in their native environments. The six-day cooking vacation, which includes excursions, meals, cooking equipment and accommodations, costs $4,100.
Cucina della Terra
Castiglione del Lago, Italy
(646) 761-8037
www.cucinadellaterra.com
Cooking in Umbria
Cooking in Umbria offers a week-long cooking vacation inside the Villa San Donnino hotel in Citta di Castello. Students will learn how to make homemade pasta and bread and cook with Umbrian wild mushrooms. They will also prepare at least a portion of every meal they eat, which may include dishes such as gnocchi, bruschette, and grilled courgette and aubergine. The holiday also includes lessons and talks from professional chefs, as well as excursions to Tuscan, La Panterra, Assisi and Perugia. The program costs $1,960, and includes everything except air travel.
Cooking in Umbria
Monks Valley Oast
Appledore Road
Tenterden, Kent, England TN30 7DB
011 (+44) 1580 767 554
www.cookinginumbria.com
Assisi Cooking
The Assisi Cooking school at Alla Madonna Del Piatto emphasizes fresh, newly harvested ingredients, which is easy to see once you step foot on the Madonna’s lush farmland. Assisi Cooking does focus on local cuisine, as many other Umbria-based cooking holidays do, but it also infuses contemporary fare and even a few Sicilian recipes as well. This program doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as the other two do, but it also doesn’t have the high price tags, either. The Assisi Cooking school is $500 for three-days’ accommodations, classes and meals. Because the school utilizes many ingredients on the farm, excursions are limited to one visit to a specialty foods shop and one visit to either a winery or coffee maker.
Assisi Cooking
The International Kitchen
330 N. Wabash, Suite #2613
Chicago, Illlinois 60611
(312) 467-0560
www.theinternationalkitchen.com/assisi.htm
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