ANNA TASCA LANZA January 18 – March 24, 2016 An intensive 10-week program for international chefs and food professionals who are passionate about bridging the gap between cooking and farming.
The 10-week Cook the Farm program is a certificated course based at Sicily’s internationally renowned Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School. Aimed at 10-12 chefs and food professionals who want to understand Mediterranean cuisine beyond the recipe, this experiential program teaches the horticultural and anthropological context of Sicily’s traditional foods. In an innovative multidisciplinary model that brings together professors, culinary specialists, and local artisans as teachers, Cook the Farm will give students the tools, inspiration, and hands-on instruction to master Sicily’s cuisine from soil to seed to spoon. Through a combination of lectures, local field trips, and kitchen and garden workshops, we will study seven culinary units: wheat, cheese, olive oil and fats, wine, honey and citrus, pastries and nuts, and garden horticulture. Afterward, a one-week Mediterranean case study will draw from the region's culinary melting pot, bringing a new set of ingredients and techniques and challenging students to think about the sociopolitical and geographical forces that shape our food systems. This year, Istanbul-based restauranteur Gamze Ineceli will lead instruction for an immersive week about Turkish cuisine. To conclude the course, a one-week study trip will show students the cultural and biological diversity of the island, while a few days on the culinary alters prepared for March’s Feast of San Giuseppe will provide an anthropological context for the island's cuisine.
Sicily is the heart of the Mediterranean, and the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School is in the mountainous heart of Sicily. Founded in 1989 by Anna Tasca Lanza, and now directed by her daughter Fabrizia Lanza, the school is in a 19th century villa on the family’s renowned Tasca D’Almerita Regaleali wine estate. Renowned for it's sustainable practices, the winery is one of the largest in Sicily, an international brand producing 50 different grape varieties, 30 different labels and 3 million bottles a year. Since opening over 25 years ago, the cooking school has hosted chefs such as Jamie Oliver, Grant Achatz, Julia Child, Alice Waters, and David Leibowitz. Catering to both travelers and cooking professionals, we hold year-round workshops on topics ranging from traditional Sicilian cooking to food writing and photography. This year's calendar includes workshops with New York Times columnist David Tanis and with olive oil expert Nancy Harmon Jenkins. Embedded in land that has been in the Tasca family since the 18th century, the school is both a part of Sicily's agricultural history and a direct link to contemporary farmers and producers, making it an ideal nucleus for our studies.
Winter in Sicily With a year-round growing season, the winter months bring a new layer of lush, green life to our hills. Farm tasks: sewing, pruning, grafting, weeding, planting and planning. In bloom: lettuce, brassicas, artichokes, citrus, herbs. Temperature: Moderate climate from 0-15 째C / 32-60 째F, with possibility of snow and rain.
WHEAT week one
The first week of the course is devoted to understanding a fundamental component of Sicily’s landscape: wheat, and the soil beneath it. Our island is the breadbasket of the Mediterranean, and breads and pastas are the soul of our diet. Pliny the Elder wrote that Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture, once taught milling and bread making in Sicily, and durum wheat has been the main crop since the Roman Empire. In the last few years, we have entered a wheat revolution, with a new emphasis on biodiversity and the production of ancient grains. After spending one day learning about sowing and the various soils of our landscape, we will explore wheat from both a horticultural and culinary standpoint through lectures, tastings, field trips and hands-on workshops. Students will make a range of pastas, learning to differentiate between the taste and compositions of various grains. Kitchen bread-making and kneading workshops will be paired with discussions on different yeasts and sourdoughs, as well as a lesson on the Italian tradition of cooking with bread. We will visit fields that grow wheat, a grain mill that grinds and processes it, and an experimental lab that scientifically studies it. Beyond developing confidence as bakers, students will gain a comprehensive understanding of crop rotations, how various flours interact, and what the contemporary gluten debate is all about.
CHEESE week two
Tuma A traditional Sicilian cheese made from sheep’s milk
The second week of the program will focus on the diversity of hard and soft cheeses produced in Sicily, beginning with hands-on lessons about the various grasses and pastureland that support our goats, cows, and sheep. Winter is one of the best seasons for cheese, because the hills around Regaleali come alive with tender, aromatic herbs and greens, which in turn flavor the milks. The inland region where the estate is located hosts the island’s main production of sheep’s milk cheeses, such as tuma, ricotta, primo sale and pecorino, and we will devote a full day to working alongside a cheesemaker. Students will learn his whole production cycle, from taking the sheep to their mountain pastures to straining ricotta. Furthermore, every day this week, two students will visit Regaleali’s shepherd, Toto, to learn the art of daily milking routines. In the kitchen, a tasting expert will join us as we study food and cheese pairings, aging and preservation techniques, the use of various plant and animal rennets, and the Sicilian tradition of adding ingredients like saffron, pistachio, or lemon to the cheese. Finally, students will learn the various ways we bake and cook with cheese, from ravioli to cassata. Oxalis
Wild Chard
Wild Arugula
OLIVE OIL & FATS week three
Alongside bread, pasta, and wine, olive oil is a key element of the Sicilian diet, and we will spend our third week delving into it and other culinary fats. Olive groves have dotted the island for centuries, and with Tuscany and Genova, Sicily is one of Italy’s main oil producers. We will begin the week from a horticultural perspective, putting on our boots and spending a day working with the cultivation of the fruit on our Regaleali estate, where we produce about 5,000 liters of olive oil annually. With the olive as our case study, we will learn about winter pruning and thinning, and the importance of supporting various cultivars. Fabrizia Lanza, author of Olive: A Global History (Reaktion Books, 2011), will give context for the mythical history of the fruit and its journey to the center of our diet, while a nutritionist will explain how our bodies process olive oil, butters, and lards differently. We’ll explore the many ways olive oil is used in Mediterranean kitchens, from frying to preserving to focaccias and doughs. In the second half of the week, we will transition into working with animal fats. We will visit a local sheep butchering to collect ingredients for a lesson on traditional nose-to-tail cuisine, then we’ll finish the week working with “suino nero,” a wild boar local to our Nebrodi Mountains and a Sicilian specialty.
WINE week four
From December to February, workers move up and down the rows of grapevines around the cooking school, working on the pota secca (dry pruning) to prepare for production season. We’ll join them during our ‘arm’-to-table week about wine, beginning our studies with a full day of hands-on learning about tilling, cultivation, water management and companion planting in our surrounding clay-rich terroir. The Tasca d’Almerita winery offers the ideal lab for our explorations into the process of winemaking, where we’ll track the whole arc of Sicilian wine production, from viticulture to pressing to storage. We’ll also hear from an enologist about the alchemy of wine, and from local producers devoted to biodynamic and organic growing practices. By the time students start working with a sommelier to taste discuss red, white, and sweet wines from Sicily, they will already have a deep understanding of the horticultural and scientific context of the grapes. Finally, no chef can understand wine without knowing how to serve it at the table, and we’ll finish the week exploring wine and food pairings and cooking various Mediterranean recipes that incorporate this drink of the gods.
HONEY & CITRONS week five
By mid-February, the estate will be flowering with Sicilian spring, and we’ll devote a week to the fruits and laborers of these flowers: citrus and bees. In the 1970s, many Sicilian beekeepers abandoned the island’s native black bee and traditional rectangular wood hives in favor of Italian bees kept in modern hives. But in the last few years, Carlo Amodeo, a beekeeper at Regaleali, rescued a hive of these endangered Sicilian black bees, creating the basis for a Slow Food Presidium. We’ll spend a day in the fields with him, gaining an understanding of his work and the scientific nuances of pollen from a bee’s perspective. Once we understand the larger picture of beekeeping, we’ll learn from a tasting specialist about the many types of local honey, such as mandarin, loquat, asphodel, carob, and almond. Just as we studied wheat and oil from a dietary standpoint, we’ll also hear from a nutritionist about how our bodies metabolize honey and sugars in different ways. Then, we’ll get our hands sticky during an afternoon making honey-based Sicilian pastries. Giardino, the Sicilian word for “garden,” actually means citrus garden, and early spring is the peak season for our oranges, grapefruits, lemons, and mandarins. We’ll take a field trip to Agrigento, the Valley of Temples, where the ancient citrus groves of the Kolymbetra Gardens provide a natural classroom for a lecture with an ethnobotanist about the history and uses of citrus in Sicily. Finally, we’ll celebrate the paradise of Sicilian citrus-based sweets, working with an expert artisan pastry chef to make classic desserts, gelatos, granitas, ice creams, marmellatas, and candied fruits.
PASTRIES & NUTS week six
Cassata a traditional ricotta cake topped with candied fruit
Almonds and bitter almonds are the main base for Sicily’s famous pastries, and it is no coincidence that they are one of the major crops in Sicily. We’ll spend our sixth week studying the many uses of these versatile nuts, which grow on gnarled, blossoming trees all over the estate. Outside, we’ll learn from an agronomist about Mediterranean cultivation of pistachios, almonds, bitter almonds, hazelnuts, and walnuts. But the majority of the week will be spent back at Case Vecchie, where we’ll transform the nuts into pesto, marzipan, almond milk, puddings, biscottis and semifreddo. For centuries, the island’s convents and monasteries have been hubs of culinary tradition and purveyors of sweet treats. Maria Grammatico, the subject of Mary Taylor Simeti’s acclaimed book Bitter Almonds and a famous Sicilian pastry chef, will join us to share traditional baking techniques that she learned from nuns in the 1950s. We’ll finish the week with a field trip to the village of Favara, where we’ll witness traditional Easter culinary preparations like the sculpting of marzipan lambs stuffed with pistachios.
HORTICULTURE week seven
You could graze your way across Regaleali in early spring, and we’ll spend a day foraging wild fennel, mint, thyme, borage, brassicas, and edible flowers to cook with back in the kitchen. We’ll discuss the nutritional and culinary differences of using wild and cultivated plants, incorporate traditional weeds into our menu, and make use of often ignored parts of the plants, from roots to bulbs to barks. Working with a tea specialist, we’ll also learn techniques for drying and pairing aromatic herbs and flowers, creating our own infusions in the kitchen. As March sunshine brings the garden to life, we’ll devote much of the week to hands-on learning about sustainable garden design and maintenance. We’ll discuss systems of composting and fertilizer, learn about grafting and cuttings, study the benefits of ornamental companion plantings, and delve into the nuances of the organic vs. conventional debate. Visits to local farms that have retained traditional and sustainable permaculture will allow us to think more broadly about the ever-evolving history of farms in the context of achieving both economic and environmental sustainability.
TURKEY
week eight
In a world flattened by internationalism, we have a global responsibility to preserve and share our natural and cultural resources. As we recognize and celebrate our differences, the food industry becomes a space for both intellectual and physical digestion. Cook the Farm is not a how-to kitchen tutorial, and this week’s case study will explore Turkish cuisine through the philosophy, geographies, migrations, myths and practices of the land of Anatolia. Led by Istanbul restaurateur Gamze Ineceli, this week will give students a new vocabulary to synthesize the forces behind Mediterranean cuisine. Sicily and Turkey are linked by both a shared Hellenistic history and more recent neighboring influences, but their cuisines have evolved in differing microclimates and social structures. After examining the agricultural roots and the seeds of the Turkish kitchen, we’ll delve into the traditional culinary methods of Anatolia through lectures, films, tastings, and demonstrations. Widening our trove of Mediterranean ingredients, we’ll trade durum wheat for bulgur, ricotta for yogurt, and Sicilian citrus for pomegranate, quince, and plum fruit sours. We will contrast Turkey’s use of spices, sweeteners, acids, fats and oils with Sicily’s, exploring techniques for preserving, fermenting, and crystallizing. Working beyond the recipe, students will apply the rhetorical framework of Cook the Farm to a new Mediterranean country: how does horticulture influence cuisine? How can we maintain culinary tradition while supporting innovation in our globalized world?
TRAPANI
PALERMO
Pistachios of Etna
MT. ETNA
MARSALA SCIACCA
STUDY TRIP week nine
CATANIA Anchovies of Sciacca
MODICA
Cook the Farm culminates with a one-week study trip around the island, which will give students a chance to witness the diversity of Sicily’s landscapes and learn the culinary and horticultural techniques that go with them. The first day, we’ll visit the convent of Palma di Montechiaro—famous for its pastry-making nuns— then we’ll sample the island’s finest olive oil in Mandarossa and dine at Pina Cuttaia, a Michelin-starred restaurant that excels at modern interpretations of Sicilian cuisine. We’ll wake up the next day in Modica, a town famous for its aromatic and dairy-free chocolate, a treat that was introduced during the Spanish invasion of Sicily and inspired by ancient Aztec recipes. After tours of both chocolate and carob factories, we’ll head to Noto for a visit with world-acclaimed pastry chef Corrado Assenza. That night, we’ll sleep in Catania, waking up the next morning to scavenge for lunch ingredients at the sprawling fresh fish market. After cooking a feast, we’ll devote the afternoon to learning about Mt. Etna’s renowned wines with expert Salvo Foti. The volcanic soil of this mountain ecosystem supports its own systems of food production, and after a scramble up to the crater, we’ll spend a day learning about Etna's pistachios, orchards, and donkeys—once the tool of choice for local laborers, the animals now provide meat and milk for regional butters and yogurts. We’ll spend the next day on a tour of Palermo’s street food cuisine, then we’ll move to Trapani, famous for its Arab-influenced couscous. Our return drive to Case Vecchie will include a visit to a Marsala winery and to Sciacca, renowned for its salted anchovies. Students will return to Regaleali with a deep understanding of our island’s biodiversity, cultural diversity, and culinary topography.
CULINARY ANTHROPOLOGY week ten
For centuries, March 19 has marked the onset of spring in Sicily, as villages around the island celebrate the feast of San Giuseppe. Women create ornate alters with traditional dishes and then offers this culinary bounty to three of the town’s poor children, a representation of the holy family. After visiting local alters, we’ll create a traditional San Giuseppe feast for our table, applying acquired knowledge of seasonal foraging, pasta-making and pastry. We’ll also hear from Mary Taylor Simeti, an acclaimed American writer who has been living in and writing about Sicily since the 1960s. Food is always a ritual, and these final days of the course will challenge students to apply a level of anthropological inquiry to their understanding of Mediterranean food systems and how they are changing over time.
Traditional bread alters
INSTRUCTORS Fabrizia Lanza After a few decades as an art historian and museum curator in northern Italy, Fabrizia moved back to help her mother with the cooking school in 2008. When Anna died in 2010, Fabrizia devoted her life to continuing her mother’s mission. She began to create the foundations for an archive of videos focusing on the techniques of foods in danger of extinction. Last year, she wrote the Kickstarter-funded documentary Amuri: The Sacred Flavors of Sicily. Fabrizia’s frequent international tours have brought her to such renowned restaurants as Alice Water’s Chez Panisse and Mario Batali’s restaurants. She receives and teaches guests and young talented chefs at the school, teaches annually for the Masters in Gastronomy at Boston University, and hosts interns who work for her at her cooking school. She published her first book, Olive, A Global History, with Reaktion UK in 2011 and her first cookbook, Coming Home to Sicily, in 2012.
Gamze Ineceli
From the other end of the Mediterranean, Gamze Ineceli is the creative and culinary force behind renowned Istanbul restaurants like Ferahfeza and Leb-i-derya. After graduating with a master’s degree in performing arts from NYU, she worked as a professional on international stages before returning to Turkey. Alongside her restaurant career, she was a columnist for Turkish newspaper AKSAM, writing about world food traditions. A few minutes into their first encounter, Gamze and Fabrizia began discussing the similarity between Sicily and Turkey both in spirit and cuisine, and they decided that you could not teach one Mediterranean culinary tradition without touching on the other countries of influence. In the school’s inaugural year, Gamze will be a guest chef for a one-week case study, teaching the agriculture, anthropological, and culinary traditions of Turkey as a way to expand students’ understanding of the whole region.
We will be joined weekly by other expert instructors as well...a beekeeper, an agronomist, a butcher, a tea specialist, an enologist, a sommelier, nutritionists, farmers, cheesemakers, olive oil experts, pastry chefs, writers, professors...
“Don’t come here to learn how to cut an onion. Come here to open your mind, to experiment and taste, to compare differences, to immerse yourself in a place where there is nothing else but the work you share with others on your team. It’s a very close community. It’s an experience.” - Fabrizia Lanza
COURSES There are approximately seven hours of instructional time a day, with a mix of lectures and hands-on workshops. At the onset of the program, students will receive a binder with weekly readings and recipes for the course, and the final week will include both a written and a practical exam. All instruction will be in English. Classes will run Monday to Friday, leaving weekends free for students to study, relax or travel Sicily. We will provide free bus transportation for three Saturday daytrips throughout the course, to take students to nearby sites of interest. This is an intensive program, and the hands-on and field-based learning will require hard work, patience, and a willingness to work as a team and smile through the occasional Sicilian spring rainshowers. FINAL EVALUATION Cook the Farm teaches students to see food off of the plate and to link it to our existence. This is not a traditional culinary program, nor a farm apprenticeship, nor an academy—but we will delve into all these areas. Building a world from these connections, we will let students develop the tools to walk into life with a round knowledge of cuisine. As such, our final evaluations will include both a written and a hands-on practical exam, with the goal of testing both student knowledge and creativity in understanding Mediterranean food production loops. ARRIVAL/DEPARTURE We will provide an airport shuttle bus to and from the Palermo airport on the first and last days of the course. ACCOMMODATIONS Students will be housed in two historic houses on the winery's estate, each a few kilometers from the school. Transportation between accomodations and the cooking school is provided, as is wifi, though the connection is sometimes sporadic in the countryside. Students will share one full bathroom and a large bedroom with twin beds with one other same-sex classmate. There are shared living spaces, laundry facilities, and full-functioning kitchens in each of the houses. The property is located amidst the Tasca d'Almerita vineyards, with many walking tours through the countryside. At the cooking school, there is a large ornamental garden for relaxing, reading and studying, and a pavilion perfect for yoga or exercising. We have a library with a large selection of cookbooks, novels, and travel books as well. The town of Vallelunga is a few kilometers from Case Vecchie, with a few shops and cafes, a post office, and a train station with easy weekend access to Palermo and other towns on the island. EATING We will provide unlimited garden produce and locally-sourced groceries for students to prepare their own breakfast and dinner. Weekday lunches are always prepared and eaten together in the kitchen, while approximately one dinner a week is eaten communally at Case Vecchie as well. Meat and fish are not included in student grocery deliveries but we will provide transportation for a weekend shopping trip to town if students would like to buy their own.
FEES € 10,000 per person, which includes: • Tuition for lessons: hands-on learning about milking, butchery, pruning, farming, preserving, and sourcing ingredients; excursions to food-producing specialists and tutorials from visiting food professionals; experiential kitchen cooking lessons of traditional Sicilian techniques in the Anna Tasca Lanza style. • All transportation, including to and from the airport and three optional Saturday excursions during the course. (Airfare to Sicily not included.) • Shared-bedroom housing with one other student in one of two historic homes on the estate. • Locally-sourced food and Tasca d'Almerita wine. • Cook the Farm apparel, a book with selected coursework, readings, and copies of all recipes taught during the program. • On successful completion, a certificate from the internationally renowned Anna Tasca Lanza cooking school. TO APPLY Please send a cv and cover letter to cookthefarm@annatascalanza.com. In your letter, please address the following questions: What is your cooking background? Have you ever lived or worked on a farm? What do you hope to gain from the program? What kind of unique skills or experience can you bring to the program? Applications are due by October 15, 2015. Students will be notified of their selection in the course by November 1.
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