Puglia, Italy
Yle Sambati, CEO of Yltour.com was recently interviewed by
Lee Laurino, Editor/Writer of Home
to Italy about her Cooking and Wine School in Puglia, Italy.
Participating in a cooking class may be one of the top activities for
travelers to Italy. It may be your
first trip or your yearly return to Italy,
Cooking with mamma's has long
been part of the creative experiences Ylenia designs for her guests. Local Italian women, grandmothers, have
taught countless guests the cooking secrets handed down for generations.
The Puglia Cooking School offers more than leaning to cook Italian
food. Yle, her name all her friends use, tells me, “When I started our
culinary program, I really felt that this was the time to introduce people to a
new way of cooking and eating. Not just
the common and well known Italian dishes, but above all the healthy and
incredible vegetarian cuisine you can create using seasonal organic
ingredients.”
“Most people think cooking vegetarian style is like not eating. Wrong. Cooking vegetarian means being more creative and
focused on using fresh ingredients that create seasonal menus and special foods
available at a specific time of the year.”
“And when it is about cooking ‘cucina povera’ style so much the better. It is the cuisine style that our ancestors
have always cooked and that it is now so popular in the south of Italy. It is only inspired by the “prodotti natural
dell terra” the natural products of the
earth, and it is great for feeling good, strong and happy."
How did you
become interested in vegetarian cooking?
“I have always been a vegetarian,
this is not a secret and I am a big fan of the cucina povera. It is amazing, so creative, never fake, and so
delicious. I’m not surprised that this cuisine style is loved by the Puglian
people from generation to generation. “
“With my job, I’m a Puglia Travel
Consultant, I am visited by so many friends from all over the world. Food and wine was often a main topic and sometimes they joined cooking lesson
that were similar to other cooking lessons they offer in other parts of Italy . When I told guests about cucina povera and explained to them what they were eating, they simply
loved it and wanted to know more about the ingredients and how to combine them.”
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| Local Mammas share their secrets |
When
did you expand your cooking lessons to include cucina povera and wine?
“So I realized it was time to create my
own cooking and wine school because it was a great way to share this experience
with friends visiting me and joining my tours from all over the world. I did not want them to join a common cooking
class, some cooking course they can easily find everywhere in Italy.”
“I really wanted to recreate the most
authentic atmosphere, cooking with local mums, using the most genuine
ingredients and educate them on how this type of cuisine could be a real elixir
for the health, eventually introducing it a couple of times in the week, at
least in the beginning.”
.
Where is your school located and who are your instructors?
“So I started looking for the most
inspiring mammas from the area (I did not need English speaking mammas I wanted
fabulous local mamme), extensively researched
this type of cuisine, studied the
nutritional facts, personally visited farmers purchasing the ingredients and
finally found a gorgeous location to open my lovely Cooking and Wine School in Squinzano, north of Lecce.
It couldn’t be but there it is: in a
place that tells everything about wine production and where you can really
enjoy the sweet rhythm of the life in a typical Salento village.
The very moment I saw the Piazza in
front of my cooking and wine school, I thought I really wanted this place to be
the witness of what food, wine and olive oil means for the Pugliesi people."
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| The view from the window of the piazza |
