Today was a wonderful day! Linda drove us to Cortona through quite a high mountain pass and over the border into Tuscany. You may recognize the name of the town as the home of Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun, and other books about living in Italy. Cortona is your quintessential hill town, though a bit more sophisticated than those we have visited in Umbria. We were told that about 70% of those who live in Cortona are "from away", and English is the shared language.
Rode up two escalators to reach the main piazza, and visited the MEAC museum and its Etruscan artifacts. We met for pizza around 1, and took advantage of the leather shops in the old town. About 2:30 we started to drive to La Celle, a monastery where St. Francis spent 6-7 years. From the monastery, which is all stone and clings to the side of a steep hill, we walked along a trail to the rental house belonging to Brigitte and Luc, a couple originally from Belgium who have lived in Cortona about 20 years. Linda had asked them to do a cooking class with us.
It was a warm, sunny day, and when we got to their place we had a cup of tea before getting down to the business of cooking. Our first task was to make a robust beef stew with plenty of olive oil, red wine, fresh vegetables, beef, and surprisingly, 2 generous tablespoons of bitter cocoa! A green salad was the next project, followed by the "strawberry snow" dessert - lots of whipped cream, broken pieces of meringues with chopped hazelnuts, and fresh halved strawberries mixed together. After assembling the appetizer - sliced fresh oranges, drizzled with Luc and Brigitte's own olive oil (they discovered that their property was an old olive grove after they purchased the land), we went out on their deck to enjoy the spectacular view with a glass of wine
When the stew had cooked about 3 hours in the oven, we assembled the saffron risotto and made polenta with yellow cornmeal. We sat down together at their marble-topped kitchen table and enjoyed a fine meal. After coffee, Susan, Sarah, and Toni walked back along the trail to La Celle, though it was nearly dark. Bryant, Linda, and I rode down the steep, bumpy "driveway" with Luc in his trusty Panda Fiat, and met the others at the monastery. A great day for celebrating Bryant's birthday!
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