The Facility: Our Cookery School in Lecce, Italy.

Our kitchens are decidedly home kitchens, even by local Italian-standards. We decided very early on that we were to specialise in the home-cooking of the region, as opposed to that of restaurants. What this means to you is that you will be both instantly at home in our kitchens, as well as find it easier to recreate what you’ve learned back in your own kitchen.

The larger of our two kitchens opens directly onto our city garden, a surprising calm in the middle of a walled city, which is easily the prettiest city in the entire south of Italy, just as ask any Italian. We form our fresh local pasta each morning directly onto wooden boards (spruce, the most common food-grade wood used in Europe) and slide them out of the way in our pasta rack that we built ourselves (and that was painted by the owner’s two sisters, the two young ladies proud of their orecchiette on the home page).

We made our grill from the famous local stone called pietra leccese- Lecce stone- that we found second-hand nearby when they were restoring a 15th century cathedral. It’s a conversation starter as well as the perfect place to grill lamb, seabass and the fresh sausages we always make Wednesday nights (we always have local dinner guests but Wednesday nights we’ve even had to stop answering the doorbell!) It’s a simple grill, yet it produces excellent results. We burn only high-quality lump charcoal (ours made from olive wood) just like you probably do at home.

For the fire starter, we use the spent lemon peels left over from making limoncello (which you’ll make whenever local, organic lemons are in season. Hint: think colder months). Organic, free and remarkably useful, we like to think of using the by-product as a great example of the sort of folksy pragmatism that drives all our lessons.

The school is large and we often eat in the wine cellar, just no one calls it that. We all call the room il nido, or the nest, because it’s where we used to cram stuff we didn’t know where else to put.

Now days we keep the room well-stocked (and better organized) with 100% local wines (except for prosecco, but that’s a given) based on the local negroamaro, primitivo, malvasia nera and la verdeca, to name only the big grapes. If you’ve never tried the wines of the Salento you’re in for a pleasant surprise. The wines tend to be elegant and fruity powerhouses (think a Tina Turner encore) and the palace’s metre-thick stone walls store the bottles perfectly. We keep over a thousand bottles on-hand at all times, just to be on the safe side.

And Friday nights we nearly always open something spectacular, such as cult double magnums of impossible-to-find local wines, that can’t be had at any price (our lawyers have instructed us to deny any connection between any giving of said dinner invitations for our fresh homemade sausages in exchange for availability of such bottles: It’s sheer coincidence. ).

Our soggiorno, or the room you might be tempted to call a ‘living room’, boasts our collection of hundreds of the local pugliesi plates, famous for the tell-tale hen. We also have a full bar, featuring not only the liqueurs from around the world but student-produced liquors such as limoncello, arancino and rosolio di basilico.

Our library has one of the largest cookbook collections in all of Italy, in either language, and students are free to browse among the casement armours at will. We also have a computer for you to use, with a several printers, an ADSL line and a soft leather reading chair so comfortable you’ll leave butt prints. If you’d like to contribute a book to the library, be sure to sign it , date it and why the book has been special to you.