Friday, July 13, 2007

Meeting the Italian Neighbours (1)

carole and mino maggi
Carole and Mino Maggi live just 2.5 km away in the local village of Trito. They run a lovely holiday complex of trulli called "Truddhi" (apparently the local dialect word for Trulli).

Carole is Welsh and met and married local boy Mino 30 years ago. They returned to Italy and have been there ever since. They are charming and friendly and said we could use their pool. We very gratefully accepted given the recent heatwave.

They also run a cookery school and do demonstration dinners. Mary and I are going on the course in September to learn how to cook real Italian, local style.

While we were out there with Bill, Andrea and Elaine they put on a demonstration dinner for their guests and us. Many of their guests were actually family so it was a very sociable evening. We arrived at 6 o'clock and watched while Mino and his sister Zia prepared and cooked the entire meal from scratch. We finally ate at 9 by which time we were ready for the food!

I was watching with great interest how Zia used the pizza oven hoping to pick up tips on how to use ours. More on the oven later...

3 comments:

Rosa said...

Next thing you know, you'll be retiring to Italy! Sounds like fun, those classes.

Rosa said...

Can't seem to comment on your cherry post, so this will have to do. Those cherries look AMAZING! You sound like me reading recipes. I think I'm getting old because lately I seem to be messing recipes up because of "little" mistakes after reading the directions incorrectly! Isn't it a pitty when you have to throw things away! Grrr. Well, those cherries in liquor look mighty fine, if I do say so myself.

Mark McLellan said...

Rosa.

But retiring to Italy *is* the plan!

Nothing got thrown away I am glad to say. The cherries in syrup are just fine spread on toast. The cherries in spirit need a month so they will be ready when we go back end of August. I am not sure whether we eat them or drink the liquid. To be on the safe side I think we'll do both :-)

MarkMcL (aka Mr English)