(map) 
She spent hours learning the English translation of the words she is living with all of her life: aglio – garlic, cipolle – onions, melanzana – eggplant, cucinare – to cook. Repeat: aglio – garlic, cipolle – onions, melanzana – eggplant, cucinare – to cook.
Why is this language so difficult! Cooking delicious dishes is a lot easier. So it seems to her, she who has been cooking the traditional dishes of the Oltrepo Pavese all her life. Now she has to explain them to foreigners, people that don’t understand Italian, the language of cooking.
You, the foreigner, the pupil, are fortunate: it is learning by demonstration, learning by doing. Con le mani in pasta! (With your hands in the dough, i.e., hands on.) It’s self-explaining and doesn’t need many words of whatever language. Leda shows, prepares, chatters on in Italian (the list of translations is lying somewhere aside), laughs a lot (that helps too!).
Every now and then you lend a hand and discover that the things that look so easy in her hands, really aren’t. Forty years of daily experience come to the fore. Who minds? You’ll try the dishes at home over and over again and will get better at it, in a while. For now, you’re satisfied, knowing you’ll be eating some of Leda’s fabulous dishes later on, at pranzo in her Azienda Agrituristica Bagarellum.
Now… what time is it?
– Contributed by Stef Smulders (see bio), mathematician, and owner of the B&B “Villa I Due Padroni” in the beautiful undiscovered Oltrepo’ Pavese area of Lombardia.www.duepadroni.it
That looks like so much fun – and tasty, too! Lucky this arrived just before lunch, since it made me so hungry. ;-)
From childhood I sat at mama’s table , watching then helping. Learning the secrets of simple foods. Now as a Chef Instructor, I teach “Hands On’ cooking at community college of the ‘Sud Italiani’. It is fun for me as we cook ,eat , drink some wine and speak of life and Italia.
The classes in Italy are so good such as this one. It is the best way to learn. There are some wonderful classes in Salento, Puglia also.
I will be there this fall to learn more and enjoy life.
Where can I find the recipe for the dish at the bottom. It looks great.
Ooo la la, thankfully and blessedly my grandmothers and other elder women in the family lived into their 90s, the last Nonna (99 yrs old) departing in 1989, this allowed not only that their great-grandchildren could see them in culinary action and set for them the template for what in the Italian kitchen is REAL(!) and GOOD(!) but the elders were able to pass on the ancient recipes and methods coupled with stories from a century past. How lucky the kids. Now I am the one to continue the ancient recipes (along with my sister) for ravioli, gnocchi, cuscusu’ and more (my gnocchi contains no egg(!!) which is an amature’s quick fix to making bullits!!!). Oh, the wonderous joy of making ravioli and other pastas with my sister or niece and nephews with the products drying on sheets on beds, sofa, dinning room table, an experience that isn’t realized when one buys the ready made stuff at the market. The joy of rolling out ropes of dough for gnocchi with hands, arms, clothing powdered white, with such experiences life is soooo good! Grazie cara Stef!!!
Some of the hands in the pictures are mine! And I enjoyed watching Leda doing all these wonderful things with pasta, wine, rabbits, etc. The pranzo afterwards exceeded all expectations! Watch out, Leda… I’ll be back!