What’s cooking in Italy?

Global TV craze makes cooking and travel a big sustainable winner

All over the world TV cookery programmes are getting big audiences. Masterchef, for instance is getting millions of viewers from Australia to Italy. Other cookery programmes are becoming a staple on the TV menu. There are often so many viewers who wish to try the recipes that supermarkets stock up in advance with specialist ingredients.

And now the cookery craze is having a real impact in tourism.

No more so than around Italy’s fertile Po Delta where hotels and agriturismo establishments are both reaping the harvest of wonderful produce and of high-spending quality tourism by creating cookery classes.

At Casa Artusi "The Best Cookery School in Italy" there are full kitchens set up for 50 people in a specially-designed classroom. Here, a half-day lesson allows participants to create one of the many Pellegrino Artusi recipes – such as Piadina flatbread, and many other mouth-watering items – which they then eat (with some of the delicious local wine, of course).

Casa Artusi also has a library, two restaurants, and a yearly massive festival  Festartusiana – all totally devoted to food and wine – so it’s a heaven for foodies. And so it should be – Pellegrino Artusi, after whom the establishment was named, was the ‘Father of Italian Cookery’ and spent his life putting together regional home-cooking recipes to create Italy’s first comprehensive cookbook in 1870.

While Casa Artusi is teaching groups of avid cooks in Romagna, on the southern side of the Po Delta, a little further north in Veneto, hands-on cooking lessons are being run by Countess Maria Giustiniani, at her beautiful stately-home agriturismo. TheTenuta Castel Venneze , set in thousands of acres of woodland and green fields has a deep-seated commitment to providing real local hospitality and a special menu every day culled from the local earth. The next step is to experience the bounty of this rich soil at close quarters and cook it yourself!

The countess is more than happy to help, and with the aid of a qualified sommelier, will help you put together a simply amazing lunch.

At the other end of the scale, upmarket arty Villa Roncuzzi, in the delightful Russi countryside close to Ravenna, is co-operating with a new local museum of food and farming to offer cookery classes taught by locals. Said hotelier and art professional Patrizia Poggi, "We are keen to make sure that the old local cooking practices don’t die out and who better to teach you than someone who has been cooking our local food all their life"

So, in a small area three very different offers are taking advantage of the Po delta’s fertile soil and massive harvest of the sea to offer a real experience to visitors. Not just the memory of remarkable terrain, warm hospitality and wonderful food and wine – but also the portable skill to be able to recreate some of the techniques and the memories at home.

And for the local tourism industry it is a boon. Cookery tourism is quality tourism and is attracted to the local terroir – consequently the benefits to the local economy are substantial.

More and more people are looking to cook authentic and local – so much so that cookery classes are also making an appearance in the MICE market – in particular as team building exercises.

Said Susy Patrito Silva of Casa Artusi "We are finding that people learn to cook together for many reasons, but at the end of the day it is all about enjoying and cherishing great local food and wine – just like our founder Pellegrino Artusi!"

Further information about Romagna cookery tours email: [email protected]

Valere Tjolle

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