Tuesday: More or less the same format as Monday, although Puglia’s excellent meats will be on the menu, as opposed to Monday’s fish (Romana, our fish monger, closes on Tuesdays). We’ll fricassee rabbit, make a great ceci bean soup and open wines you’ve only read about.

Wednesday: In the morning, Lecce’s premiere artistic guide will show you the city, which you will see through her local and particularly sensitive eye. You’ll better grasp Italy’s placement in the Mediterranean, the role that Greece played in her history and begin to see Central and Northern Italy from a southerner’s perspective. You’ll also be able to take advantage of the guide’s excellent contacts, gaining the rare ability to pursue your own personal interests using local contacts: ceramics and shopping, papier-mâché and music, wrought-iron and boutique foods. After two days spent cooking, you’ll get the afternoon off. We meet in the early evening to make fresh sausages from scratch. Weather-permitting, we’ll grill them over olive wood lump-charcoal and accompany them with our own house Primitivo, handmade for us by our friend, Anna-Lisa, who often joins us for dinner and explains how she makes the wine.

Thursday: We’ll visit Romana, our fish monger, and buy fish for dinner. We’ll drop it at the school and then compose really, really good sandwiches of left-over grilled sausages, charred bell peppers, local cheeses and a two-napkin, garlicky vinaigrette that the crusty bread absorbs. We’ll pack the picnic baskets and head for Otranto, one of the prettiest beach towns in all of Italy. We’ll eat lunch on the beach and if the weather is good, you can even enter the water. After lunch you’ll see the largest mosaic cycle in all of Europe, as historically significant and intellectually rigorous as the Divine Comedy, but virtually unknown outside of Italy. We’ll head back to Lecce, take a break and then meet for a grilled fish dinner with lots of bone-dry local white wine.

Friday: This is the students’ day and anything can happen. We most often cook a local version of fish soup for lunch, but some groups elect to make fresh egg pasta instead (not local, but still Italian). Friday night is a house party, and we’ll open some special bottles of wine.You will have chosen your favourite dishes from the week and will prepare a massive meal for the staff and favourite friends from the week. Small gifts are often exchanged and things tend to get a little sentimental. Someone will bring a guitar and there will be singing, but we’ll hopefully stop on the positive side of actually forming a conga line.

Saturday: Free morning (with or without aspirin). We’ll have arranged your departure for you. Most take the Eurostar to Rome or a cab to airport in Brindisi. Weeping and exchanging addresses.

To learn more about the types of food you will be making, take sausages, for example, click here.
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