This May, head to Italy’s Abruzzo for a week-long immersion in all things food and cooking.
Organised and hosted by the team at the magical Casa del Colle, Between the Mountains and the Sea is a unique way to experience an Italian food tradition and the landscape which has shaped it. All profits from the trip will fund Square Food Foundation’s food education projects in Bristol’s schools and community.
This culinary and cultural adventure will involve cooking, markets, wonderful restaurants, walking in the hills with a shepherd, a little foraging, an Abruzzese BBQ, beautiful churches, wine, olive oil, cheese…. All in the company of your host Stephen - and two professional and passionate chefs who have only just recently fallen in love with this amazing and very different part of Italy.
Dates
Week 1: May 4 - 11, 2022 - Fully booked!
Week 2: May 13 – 20, 2022. Fully booked!
A bit about what the trip involves
This is your time, to spend as you like. Choose to take part in every activity or simply sit by the pool or walk in the hills. Below is an idea of the kind of thing you can expect:
Tasting traditional Abruzzese dishes and wines in local restaurants
Visiting markets, including Pescara fish market to buy wonderful ingredients to cook with
Taking a trip up into the Gran Sasso mountains and a place of ancient pasturelands near the summit
Visiting Danielle D’Agostini’s farm to see how their legendary sheep’s milk cheese is produced
A visit to a medieval mountain village and a 10th century fortress, the highest in the Apennines
Relaxed and entertaining cookery sessions with Barny and Rosie
Time to do nothing or sleep or swim or go for a solitary walk in the hills
Costs
£1475 per person
Flights, transfers and all transport during your stay
Full board
Lovely accommodation based on shared occupancy of double room
Two dedicated chefs with you for the week
All profits support Square Food Foundation’ s food education programmes
What’s not included
Single room supplement
Insurance
Items of personal nature such as telephone calls or gifts to bring back
Where you’ll stay
Accommodation is at Casa del Colle, a large, comfortable and newly renovated, architect-designed villa with incredible panoramic views that encompass both the massive Gran Sasso mountains, that loom 10,000 feet up over the villa, and the sea. Casa del Colle is set in its own grounds of 2.5 acres with space to relax either inside or outside by the large salt water pool.
A bit about your hosts
Stephen Hughes owns and manages Casa del Colle. He splits his time between Bristol and Italy (usually to coincide with the olive harvest).
“I love what this part of Italy means for me and want to share it. I have a passion for how rural Italy has retained a connection with the land and local food (and food traditions) that I feel we have lost; a connection that isn’t simply a nostalgic backward look at a way of life that most of the western world is losing, but an approach to food that we need to rediscover. In hosting these tours I want to share that passion and give something back to a local economy with traditions that I cherish and the families and farmers who have made such an impact on my life”
As well as Steven, You’ll spend the week shopping, cooking and learning from Square Food Founder, Barny Haughton and professional chef and food writer, Rosie Sykes.
“Nearly four years ago, Stephen and I made a plan to host a culinary adventure at Steve’s villa near the town of Penne in Abruzzo, a region of Italy on the east side of the country wedged between the Apennine mountains and the Adriatic sea. The trip was planned for May 2020. And then it was postponed to September 2020. Then to May 2021. Or possibly late September …. And like so many plans so many of us made over the past two years, this trip began to seem as if it might never really happen.
But Storm Eunice (and Franklin) has just been and gone , the snowdrops and wild garlic are out and the May editions of this unique culinary experience are firmly in place.
I love this region of Italy more than any other. I am pretty sure you will love it too.
Meanwhile for those of you who like wild garlic – it’s out now in woodlands everywhere. Pick a bunch, wash it, discard the bigger stalks, chop up the leaves, cook it gently in a generous mixture of cream and butter until it is soft, add some finely chopped walnuts and lots of parmesan and toss through some just cooked egg tagliatelle.”
A bit about Abruzzo
Arriving in the Abruzzo region for the first time, you might think you were somewhere other than Italy. Separated from the rest of the country by the Apennine mountains, it was not until the 1960s and the building of tunnels connecting the region with Rome and Bologna, that people began to travel there at all. Its economy remains almost entirely agricultural and self-sufficient, geographically defined by the borders of the Gran Sasso, the highest part of the Apennines on one side and the Adriatic sea on the other. Small wonder that Abruzzese food traditions are a reflection of its landscape as well as its people and that, more than any other part of Italy, it has retained its links to traditional produce and cultures.
Abruzzo is home to a rich diversity of products and ingredients, unique to the region and all with a story. Some 17 of them, from cheese and apples to lentils and olive oil, are part of the Slow Food Ark of Taste (link) – a measure of their global significance in the world of food traditions .
Abruzzo is also recognised as the greenest region in Europe as almost half of its territory, the largest in Europe, is set aside as national parks and protected nature reserves. These ensure the survival of 75% of Europe's living species, including rare species such as the small wading dotterel, the golden eagle, the Abruzzese chamois, the Apennine wolf and the Marsican brown bear.