Tuscany Cooking Class With Private Chef
In our Tuscany cooking class experience, you will learn how to cook traditional, seasonal Tuscan dishes in the tranquillity of a private Tuscan villa overlooking the rolling Chianti hills.
Your hosts for the cooking class will be the husband and wife team of Marco and Eleonora, whose family has owned the villa and surrounding 30 hectares of Olive groves for nearly 200 years. For authentic, rustic, Tuscan charm, no other cooking experience compares!
All dietary requirements can be catered for, including gluten-free, vegan, & vegetarian. Please let us know at the time of booking.
What’s Included In Our Tuscany Cooking Class Experience?
- Your travel to and from a pre-arranged meeting spot to the stunning Tuscan Villa
- Use of a private villa whose owners will be your chefs for the evening
- Fresh, local market-bought produce for the meal
- Pasta-making instructions
- Chianti wine to go with the dinner you have just made!
Tuscany Cooking Class Description
Upon arrival, you will be greeted by Eleonora & Marco.
It would be a crime to head straight into the kitchen without a tour and history lesson of the villa and local area, so Eleonora will guide you through the villa and its surrounding gardens.
Here you will learn about its origins as a 15th-century strategic outpost owned by the Gherardini family (the commissioning family of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa) to protect them from their Florentine enemies, through to its purchase by the Florentine noble family, the Marchesi Niccolini, in the late 17th century, when they decided to use the villa as their summer residence.
You will also view the private chapel, which was built in 1694 and is home to a beautiful painting of the Madonna Della Assunzione, painted by the school of the Venetian painter, Tintoretto. The chapel also has a ‘secret window’, but you’ll learn all about this during your visit!
Get The Cooking Underway In The Kitchen
During your three-hour hands-on private cooking class, you will cook in the villa’s characteristic traditional kitchen and learn how to prepare a three-course Tuscan meal with ‘amore’ (including making your own hand-made pasta from scratch).
Fresh ingredients will be purchased at the local markets on the day by Eleonora prior to your arrival, and the menu offering is always adapted to what is in season.
Let Us Eat!
Finally, you will enjoy the fruits of your labor (and a few glasses of Chianti!) seated in the grand dining room. It’s decorated with 19th-century wall-to-ceiling frescoes in the Romantic style of the era, adding a beautiful touch of magic to your meal.
Why Include A Cooking Class In Your Tuscany Vacation?
We believe that there is no finer introduction to Italian and particularly Tuscan style cooking than joining us for this cooking class experience.
As a region, Tuscany is blessed with an abundance of delicious fresh fruit and vegetables, as well as bountiful wild game, lean, flavorful beef and pork, and a huge variety of fresh fish and seafood captured directly from the Mediterranean.
Quite simply, whatever style of meal you would prefer, Eleonora & Marco will source it from a local market beforehand so you get a truly authentic Tuscan cooking experience.
Alongside understanding how to make traditional Italian fare in a classic Tuscan kitchen, this experience provides that bit extra by providing the essential local insight, knowledge, and Tuscan flavor provided by your hosts. You will learn just as much about the culture and way of life here in Tuscany as you will about making Pasta!
