Food Adventures in Italy

By RachelAdmin

By Rachel Davies

I decided that August was my time to explore. It’s generally a quiet time, as everyone else goes away, so I thought that I should take advantage of this and go away too.

My destination was Locanda del Capitano, a small restaurant in the beautiful town of Montone in Umbria, owned and run by Giancarlo Polito, a chef with a big personality and beautiful food.

Umbria itself is an amazing region, producing great olive oil, wine, Castelluccio lentils, farro, wild boar, cheeses, truffles, and every kind of pork product you can imagine.

I spent 10 days in the restaurant, cooking in the kitchen, getting to know the dishes, the small team of staff, and how it all worked.

The food was lovely, made up of simple local ingredients, including tagliata, a melt in your mouth steak served sliced and covered in black truffle shavings; duck ravioli with a delicious duck and orange ragout and shavings from a complex aged pecorino; and guinea fowl breasts wrapped in a crust of Castelluccio lentils, held together by a beautiful veil-like wrapping which I later found out was pigs intestine.

What struck me was how homely the Italian chefs techniques were. The chefs sharpened their knives using another knife rather than a steel, which I’d never seen before, and certainly won’t be trying on my knives.

They also often chopped using pairing knives cutting towards their thumbs, which was no doubt how their mothers cut their vegetables too, but it gave me the shivers as I imagined sliced off digits falling to the chopping board each time I watched.

My main highlight was the staff meal. Every day before guests started arriving for dinner, Clemente would dish up massive plates of pasta for us.

The dishes changed every day – one day a take on spaghetti puttanesca, the next penne tossed with aubergine, tomato, basil, and glugs of lovely olive oil, then penne coated with courgette pesto and crispy bacon.

The pasta was always perfectly al dente, and the sauce just right.

You don’t get this food in restaurants. You need an Italian to cook it for you as if they were at home, tossing through handfuls of grated parmesan and piling it up on a large plate. Bliss.

My other highlight was trips to the coffee machine, a majestic gold Gaggia that sat on top of the bar. Our small kitchen team trooped over to the bar, either before work started, or when it was time to take a break, and took part in the coffee ritual with seriousness.

Espressos were made, sugar stirred in, and finished with the requisite dash of aniseed liqueur and an ice cube. Once the cups had been drained it was time to get back to work.

Of course I went there to work too, and I learnt how to make lovely grissini, and some beautiful Italian dishes which will feature in some of my upcoming classes.

I left them having taught Debora how to make macarons, and we even had an impromptu Japanese night when Ken, over from Japan for the summer, made us this beautiful sushi with soy jelly on top.