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Eating Italy

Many of us manage to spend at least a couple of weeks in Italy each year, usually congregating in Tuscany, Umbria, Rome and Venice, not just for the food and wine but they certainly assist in the choice of destination. Our recent stay in southern Umbria this summer was especially notable for all of the consistently good quality meals—usually for around US$120 for four hungry people. The wines too were for once of a higher standard than I am used to from regular forays into Venice.

Nancy Jenkins is an old foodie friend of mine who has lived in Tuscany for more than 30 years and written several books on the Mediterranean diet as well as spending time as a staff writer for the New York Times on food. We met through her former husband, the Pulitzer Prize winning foreign correspondent Loren Jenkins, when they were based in a magnificent Cortini Palazzo in central Rome. I still have the image etched on my mind from then of their barefoot 12 year-old daughter Sarah (who has since become a highly regarded chef in New York). She was ambling away from the refrigerator idly eating great spoonfuls of Beluga from a recently arrived kilo that Loren had bought from Tehran.

Nancy wrote a number of food books and was for a time a big cheese in the CIA ( in this case it stands for the Culinary Institute of America). Her latest book, "Cucina del Sole: a celebration of southern Italian cooking", was published this summer. Now she has branched out from her literary pursuits based near Cortona and takes small groups on food tours, not just in central Italy but also in Sicily and Turkey. They are arranged through The Viking Life (an arm of the Viking kitchenware company), and the next one is Flavors of Tuscany and Umbria: Green Oil, White Truffles, and Brown Mushrooms from October 20-29, 2007. The cost for guests is around US$5,000 per person, which includes most but not all meals.

What makes tours like this so worthwhile is that it gives participants the opportunity to meet not only top Brunello wine producers but small scale artisans who create pecorino not to mention local butchers and bakers. There are also informal cooking courses and trips to witness the olive oil harvest.

When I said to her that my only fear is that the usual age of participants hovers around post retirement age, she assured me that on her last one people ranged from 17 to 85. Although there will be hunts for white truffles on the itinerary, Nancy is not so optimistic on that front. It has been one of the worst seasons in recent memory for them in Italy. Some of the suppliers are even putting aside their usual prejudices and going as far afield as Croatia to source them.