Lecce is a historic city of 95,200 inhabitants in southern Italy, the capital of the province of Lecce, the second province in the region by population, as well as one of the most important cities of Puglia
The Awaiting Table in Lecce Italy is a year round, hands-on, regional Italian cookery school and Southern Italian wine programme, based in Lecce, Italy. Students learn to make hand-crafted pastas like cavatelli and orecchiette, which are served for lunch and dinner with a leisurely nap in between.
Here you learn by doing, not by watching....
Classes at The Awaiting Table in Lecce starting off with a cup of Italian espresso underneath the statue of Sant’ Oronzo, followed by a market tour that includes meeting local greengrocers and butchers and learning at least a smidge of Italian.
The cookery course can begin at the local market, woven baskets in hand, ordering fish still dripping with the Med from Mimmino our fish monger and produce from the school's trusted greengrocer or making pasta by hand back in our dream kitchen, at The Awaiting Table you are an active participant, not just a spectator. You will get your hands dirty. You will meet the locals. You will make friends. You’ll will eat and drink and laugh, but you won’t ever see Italy or Italian food and wine exactly the same way again.
Castle courses, which are more festive and often focused, inlcude activities such as the ‘Making of the Annual Tomato Sauce’, San Martino and our ‘School’s Birthday’ (We will celebrate 10 years in September 2013), allowing you to cook on a larger scale (you haven’t really cooked until you’ve stirred a cauldron large enough to require a boat oar).
And then there is the wine.......
The teacher is a nationally-certified Italian sommelier offering their wine programme, Terronia: the New Wine School of Southern Italy, using the autochthonous Southern Italian varietals as models to go deeper into wine- how to taste it, how it’s made, how to match it- than you ever thought possible in one week.
It’s a liquid so precise in its flavours that a well-trained mouth can sense which plant surrendered its grapes to produce it, where that plant was located, in which country, region, village, who made it, how, whether he or she stored it in stainless steel, wood, concrete or simply put it into the bottle early, and even the year the those grapes lived their brief life.
It’s nothing short of remarkable.
Like art, literature, travel, it’s how much of the world seeks pleasure. I don’t mean to say in its refreshment, calories or even alcohol, but in appreciating the subtle differences inherent in the glass. Want to understand a specific place in Western civilization? Start with its wine: much can be learned. Does a culture seek subtle refinement? Bravado? Cultural legitimacy? All of this is contained in its wine, as sure as reading the plaques on its monuments.
But all of this is an argument in favour of getting to know wine in general. And all of the above is also true of Southern Italian wine, only more so. The South is where Italian wine started. It’s where it’s had the longest history, the most time for the proper grapes to find the proper sites. And the local food has grown up next to- and has been informed by- the local wine, longer than anywhere else in all of Italy.
The Culture of Food in Puglia
Italy's 'heel', Puglia, is literally a luscious garden right in the middle of the Mediterranen. Our produce is envied by the rest of italy and our wines, opulent and captivating with the first sip.
The Salento is the most southerly sub-region of Puglia, marked principally by the fact that il Salento in bounded in fact by the Mediterranean on three of its sides. (J’Ionio to the west and south, l’Adriatico to the east and south). Due to its lack of elevation, the region has no real dairy or pork industry, the ingredients are classically absent from the diet. Which is why the region is famous for its so-called ‘Mediterranean Diet’, which only a fraction of those that live on the Mediterranean actually eat. High in fish, green-leaved plants, whole grains, fruits and vegetables, the diet of The Salento is now protected by law. Its principle oil olive is l’ogliarola salentina. Its three principle red wine grapes are negroamaro, primitivo and to a lesser extent, susumaniello. Its primary white wine grapes are fiano and verdeca.
A one-day class at The Awaiting Table costs €295 (US$377) and a week-long program costs €1695 (US$2164).