Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 The best way to understand the Tuscan pastry art is to have a walk in Siena with an open mind, following the trail of spices, paying attention to the colours and to the ingredients of the baked goods arranged in the shop windows of bakeries, cafés, and pastry shops. The Tuscan pastry art isn’t show stopping, elegant, refined or e...
Dec 15, 2021•31 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 In today’s episode we’re travelling southward, towards the heel of the boot of the Italian peninsula, Salento. Today’s guest is Nina Gigante, a wellness, food, and travel journalist, and a qualified holistic nutritionist. While we were in Salento to visit Tommaso’s family, I was continuously texting Nina to have advice on where t...
Aug 17, 2021•35 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 In this episode of Cooking with an Italian Accent, we travel to the mountains to visit my friend Vea Carpi. She is a cook, a farmer, a sourdough baker, and passionate about wool. She has a maso up in the Trentino mountains and an agritourism with her family. We are both from Tuscany, but we met there, in her farmstead, where we w...
Aug 10, 2021•44 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 In this episode of Cooking with an Italian Accent, as promised, we have a guest that will guide us through one of the most beautiful Italian regions. This region recently filled your imagination with postcard-like maritime views, bowls of trofie al pesto and Vespa rides thanks to the latest Disney Pixar movie, Luca. Today we’ll g...
Aug 03, 2021•41 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 This is the first episode of our second season, a special summer edition, a short collection of 4 episodes. In this episode of Cooking with an Italian Accent I switched role and asked our friend Valentina Dainelli, known on line as ToomuchTuscany, to be the host of this conversation: I felt it would have been much more interestin...
Jul 27, 2021•40 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 In this episode of Cooking with an Italian Accent we celebrate the spring season, its produce, with asparagus, fresh peas, fava beans and monk’s bears. We celebrate fresh herbs, one of my favourite ingredients in the kitchen, and the magic of foraged wild flowers, like robinia flowers and elderflowers. This is also the last episo...
May 18, 2021•28 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 In this episode of Cooking with an Italian Accent I’m going back over our past 12 years of blogging, and I’ll share with you the reasons why we still believe in blogs, and why we love it so much. I’m also sharing my tips to maintain a long-term relationship with your blog: - Write about something relevant for you. - Be authentic....
Mar 20, 2021•16 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 In this episode of Cooking with an Italian Accent I’m sharing why I love risotto, and why I find it is a therapeutic recipe. When making risotto, let your senses guide you. Risotto is also a perfect example of the physical theory of everyday cooking, The Time-Work Continuum, shared by Mark Bittman in 2014. I’m also sharing the re...
Mar 05, 2021•18 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 From the last episode of this podcast, a few things have changed. Summer has gone, leaving space to a bright, mild Tuscan autumn, and now it is winter, well, it’s Christmas in a few hours. On August, the 28th, we welcomed Livia, our baby girl, into this world. It has been long, exhausting, and emotional beyond words. The old life...
Dec 23, 2020•13 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 Before a well-deserved pause to welcome our baby girl into the world, and to get used to a completely new life, I’m so happy to share the latest episode of Cooking with an Italian accent, a conversation I had a few weeks ago with Irina Gergescu about her cookbook, Carpathia. I like how she intertwines recipes, traditions and supe...
Aug 17, 2020•1 hr 9 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 In today’s episode we’ll be talking in details about the pound cake, known as quattro quarti in Italian. This is probably the cake I make more often, especially in its version made with extra virgin olive oil, the most appreciated during our cooking classes, but also the one I rely on when I don’t have a clear idea on what to bak...
Jul 20, 2020•17 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 We reached the 40th episode of our podcast "Cooking with an Italian Accent"! So it's time to celebrate and to recap what we’ve done so far in these 15 months spent together, what you liked the most, why we love this podcast so much and how it perfectly integrates in all that we do. We’ll talk also about who we are, what we like a...
Jul 12, 2020•18 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 oday we are talking about cookbooks. When I was organizing my cookbooks on the bookshelves, I rediscovered some favourites from the past that needed some more love, and realised there are cookbooks that I barely opened after the initial I-desperately-need-this-book enthusiasm. So, I thought I would share some of my favourite cook...
Jun 11, 2020•11 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 Juls’ Kitchen is a family business. Tommaso and I work together to teach classes, develop recipes for clients, taking photos, producing the podcast, and writing the blog and the newsletter, along with cookbooks and articles. It has its highs and lows, but this is our job, and career. We do not have a backup plan, and, to be hones...
May 27, 2020•10 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 This is a special episode with a dear friend, Regula Ysewijn. We met in London in 2011, at the Food Blogger Connect, and since then we’ve become best friends, supporting each other through life and work endeavours. Today we’re here to celebrate her new cookbook, Oats in the North, Wheat from the South. This book is Regula’s love ...
May 15, 2020•55 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 One of the few positive aspects of this eternal lockdown is that I had the chance to learn new recipes and techniques. Usually, I am too busy trying to respect deadlines, juggling cooking classes and assignments, so I just play it safe. Week after week, I cook those old reliable recipes that are part of my cooking repertoire. Com...
Apr 24, 2020•31 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 I didn’t think my way of cooking would change much during the lockdown. I thought I was already quite organised, with a well-stocked pantry, responsible in using my ingredients and leftovers and creative when it comes to improvising. Yet, in more than a month of lockdown, I noticed some changes that made me reflect on my approach...
Apr 17, 2020•12 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 There are two different aspects of comfort food: on one side, there’s the food that gives you comfort and pleasure when you eat it, like pappa al pomodoro, on the other side, the many foods that give you solace, a respite from the news, from heavy thoughts, from comparison, when you cook them: just think about bread. In this epis...
Apr 03, 2020•30 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 After 11 years of blogging, a love born by stirring a ciambellone on a kitchen stool with mum, 5 cookbooks, a podcast, countless projects never launched or lost along the way, and numerous dreams kept among the pages of a notebook, I keep asking myself what is food for me. I haven’t grown tired of writing recipes. For a while, I ...
Feb 24, 2020•11 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 Today buying good quality chestnut flour can be difficult, and it is certainly more expensive than it used to be. A good local organic stone ground wheat flour costs about 2€ a kilo. If you want to buy an organic, stone ground chestnut flour made with local chestnuts, that flour can cost from 10€ up to 15€ a kilo! It used to be t...
Feb 01, 2020•18 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 Today I am here to celebrate the citrus season, with their brightness, the joy they add to cold winter days, the liveliness they lend to rich dishes, or the depth of flavour they give to the simplest salads. In this episode, I’m sharing how I use them, when I’m not munching on clementines directly from a paper bag coming home fro...
Jan 24, 2020•19 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 I learnt to cook from my grandmother, watching her patiently stirring a pot of ragù, or foraging herbs in the fields to make a salad, or an omelette. I learnt to cook because I was hungry for delicious, diverse food: my mum had a basic approach to cooking, which did not include “strange” ingredients such as butternut squash or th...
Jan 15, 2020•8 min
Until a few years ago, come January I would write a list of goals and good intentions. I felt productive, optimist, effective. Within a few months, though, that list would mark the measure of my failures. Now I choose a word that will represent the year I have in front of me, a word that will guide me, help me to make decisions and choose a path to follow. It is much more effective, and kind, to choose a word rather than listing down goals. This year I chose intentionality as my 2020 word. Which...
Jan 08, 2020•10 min
How would I describe my ideal Christmas? Which are the first words that come to my mind when I think about Christmas? This year, I would pick humble. Humble as the unassuming log that the head of the family would put in the fireplace at Christmas Eve. It would burn slowly, the embers glowing in the dark, until the next day, or sometimes until the new year. Therefore, my ideal Christmas would be also deeply connected to winter and to Nature. I’m also sharing some seasonal Tuscan recipes for a hom...
Dec 23, 2019•12 min
Subscribe to our newsletter, Letters from Tuscany: https://julskitchen.substack.com/ Use this link to get 10% off for 1 year: https://julskitchen.substack.com/podcast10 This is a bonus episode, a small precious gift for you in the days waiting for Christmas. Today I’m going to share with you my favourite Christmas cookbook, Nigel Slater’s The Christmas Chronicles. If you liked the bonus track, there will be more, more books and ideas, in the next months. If you have questions about Italian and T...
Dec 16, 2019•5 min
Until a few years ago, when we wanted to be inspired, try new foods and restaurants, breath some fresh air and live an exciting adventure, we would fly to London. In the recent years though, especially after the 2015 Expo, we take a fast train to Milan. In less than 3 hours we’re there from Florence. If you’re planning a trip to Milan, do not miss today’s episode with Myriam Sabolla, a friend, a communication strategist, a food coach and a keen cook. We had a talk about why Milan is the next cit...
Nov 23, 2019•23 min
Today’s theme is vegetables, but not any kind of vegetables. I am here to praise the charm of overcooked vegetables. Not all vegetables give their best when cooked for long time, some get soggy and unpalatable, but take French beans, broccoli or cavolo nero. They give up, surrender to the flame and develop a buttery texture and an intense aroma, which can suit pasta dishes, meat and even stand up for itself in a comforting side dish. So, this is how I tend to cook vegetables. What about you? Do ...
Nov 06, 2019•16 min
One of the ingredients that has always caused more questions and doubts during my cooking classes is olive oil. I’ve grown up worshipping olive oil as key ingredient in Tuscan cooking, it is still my favourite one. I’ve given for granted uses, good habits and qualities until more and more questions during cooking classes made me pause to reflect. So this is why we decided to dedicate a whole episode to extra virgin olive oil, interviewing Paolo Pruneti from Frantoio Pruneti on the history and qu...
Oct 26, 2019•36 min
If you are passionate about Italian and Tuscan cuisine and want to explore the staple ingredients, if you are about to move on your own and you need to stock up your pantry from zero, or if you, like me, enjoy browsing through the pantries of other people, don’t miss today’s episode. Today we’ll explore a well-stocked Tuscan pantry. Once you define a number of recipes that you love, that are reliable and express your true soul as a cook, work on your pantry. Stock it with the essential ingredien...
Oct 19, 2019•30 min
This has been the most intense and rewarding cooking class season so far. Today I want to bring you with me during a cooking class. I’ve been teaching Tuscan cooking classes for 8 years now, since I left my 9-to-5 job at the end of 2011. Now it is 5 years that I’ve been working with Tommaso – and one year ago I married him, too! – in this big life project that we call Juls’ Kitchen. Cooking classes are just a part of it, along with recipe development and food photography for magazines and food b...
Oct 04, 2019•25 min
