Life, Love & Recipes from My Tuscan Kitchen | August 2026 🇮🇹
|
Ciao Reader, Here in Bolgheri, on the Tuscan coast, we had our first rain a couple of days ago, and finally the scorching temperatures are giving us a little break. I’m writing this in front of my computer with some cool air coming through the window. So good. The garden is having a break too. This year I had to fight an invasion of eggplants, and I’ve used them in every possible way. Parmigiana di melanzane (eggplant parmesan), of course, but also stuffed eggplants, pasta, savory pies… At a certain point, I think there was an eggplant in almost everything I cooked! We have a Parmigiana di melanzane antipasti recipe in our library if you'd like to check it out. And I’ve been cooking a lot. For the past few weeks, I’ve been working as a private chef for a group of very nice Americans staying in one of the most beautiful villas in our area, overlooking Castagneto Carducci and the Mediterranean Sea. The villa has a stunning view over the village and all the way to the sea, surrounded by a huge garden spread over several hills. There is even an old medieval tower on the property. The tower belongs to the Della Gherardesca family, whose history has been intertwined with this area for centuries. The family once controlled extensive lands around Castagneto, Bolgheri and this part of the Tuscan coast. It’s a long and interesting story, which I’ll be happy to share with you over a glass of wine! The villa has some more recent stories too. Over the years, Montepergoli has welcomed quite a few famous guests. George Clooney stayed here with friends and apparently left a note in the guest book saying it was the best trip he had ever taken. Mick Jagger spent several months here in 2020, and Sarah Ferguson was a frequent visitor to Castagneto in the late 1990s, when she was romantically linked to Count Gaddo della Gherardesca, a story that kept the paparazzi rather busy at the time! So yes, I’ve spent part of my summer cooking in a kitchen with quite a guest list! I’ve prepared many dinners for the guests, mostly based on the Italian home cooking I know best. Lots of vegetables, pasta, eggplant and zucchini parmigiana, meatballs with tomato sauce, savory pies, salads, focaccia, panna cotta, lava cake, peach and blueberry cake, and so on... Nothing created to impress with twenty ingredients and tweezers. Just the kind of food I like to cook and eat. And actually, the guests chose most of these dishes themselves from our Cooking Club recipe library! We also cooked together in my kitchen a couple of times, making ravioli and fresh pappardelle. Season 21!We also started a new season of Chicca’s Cooking Club. Season 21... in between all this cooking! Sometimes I have to stop and think about that number. We’ve now been cooking together for more than six years, and there are still people in the Club who have been with us since recipe number 1. When we started in 2020, I really thought online classes were something we would do until everyone could travel again. I certainly didn’t imagine that six years later I would still see some of the same faces popping up in kitchens on the other side of the world. That part still amazes me. Our first class of the season was the Rustic Tuscan Tomato & Burrata Tart, and afterwards the pictures started arriving. What I loved most was seeing how everyone started with the same recipe and made it their own: different tomatoes, different pans, pesto instead of the infused oil, different cheeses, tomatoes picked straight from the garden... And then the tarts went out into real life, to husbands, friends, neighbors, and even a neighborhood happy hour! This is one of my favorite parts of the Cooking Club. I teach the recipe from my kitchen in Tuscany, we cook it together, and then it goes home with you and becomes yours. One July morning I never shared with youI never got a chance to share this with you in July because we were busy with our Cooking Club enrollment, but it's one of my favorite mornings of the summer. Every year on July 16, the gates to the private road leading up to Castiglioncello di Bolgheri open for just one day, for the Festa della Madonna del Carmine. So at 6:30 in the morning, Arnaud and I meet our biking friends and start riding along the Bolgheri Wine Road toward the old gate. We go early to escape the summer heat, but also because there is something quite magical about having this road almost entirely to ourselves. And, as usual, this year we were the first ones there! From the gate it's about seven kilometers uphill, through vineyards, forest and the ruins of old stone houses, until we reach the castle at the top. These hills have belonged to the Della Gherardesca family for centuries, and their story is deeply connected with the history of Bolgheri and its wines. Two daughters, Clarice and Carlotta della Gherardesca, would later marry into the Incisa della Rocchetta and Antinori families, names that became inseparable from the story of Bolgheri wine. Up there, there are just trees, old stones, the smell of Mediterranean herbs, and an incredible view all the way to the sea. And hidden among all this wild landscape is one very important little vineyard and a tiny piece of modern Italian wine history. Those vines were the beginning of Sassicaia. But I’ll save the rest of that story for another day... We stayed for a while, took our pictures, and then rode slowly back home for coffee and breakfast together. I've travelled thousands of kilometers by bicycle around the world, but some of my favorite rides are now the ones that begin right outside my front door. Now I need your helpWe’re going to start sharing some recipes again from our Cooking Club library of more than 120 classes. Usually we choose which recipe to give you. This time, my team and I thought you should choose!
I know I’ve shared the little molten chocolate cakes before, but I’ve made them so many times this summer, and they’ve been such a success every single time, that I thought they deserved another chance! And the risotto? It’s very summery, full of tomato flavor and one of those dishes that tastes like August to me. I’ll send the winning recipe in my next email, with a code so you can access the cooking video from our Cooking Club library for free. I’m curious to see which one wins. Thanks for reading my little update. With love from Tuscany, |