For the guests of our now closed B&B Villa I Due Padroni we often organized a cooking workshop. This took place at one of the best restaurants in the Oltrepò Pavese: BagarellumThis little farmhouse is located in the ancient hamlet Bagarello, in the same municipality where we lived, in the beautiful wine region of Lombardy, 60 km south of Milan.
Learning to cook Italian in the most authentic place you can find, with the cheerful Leda as your culinary guide: that turned out to be a great success. Dozens of guests of our B&B have learned a few secrets of Leda’s traditional cooking.
Making Ravioli with Leda
After much insistence from us and the same guests, the all too modest Leda was finally prepared to put her recipes in writing a few years ago. At first only in Italian, but now there is finally also the Dutch translation of the book with her wonder recipes!
Some of the recipes have previously appeared in translation on This is Italy:
However, these recipes only make up half of everything else included in the book, so there is still a lot of delicious stuff to discover!
The book titled The Traditional Cuisine of the Oltrepò Pavese is available as a paperback (98 pages) (€7,50) and as an ebook (only €2) at amazon.nl.
The cover of Leda’s cookbook
From the blurb:
For many years Leda Piaggi and her husband Nando have been running their restaurant and agriturismo Bagarello. Now Leda Piaggi has decided to share her experiences with her guests and friends by writing a book with recipes of the dishes she has cooked for them for 23 years. She did not just want to write a cookbook, when you read it you will realize that it reads like a letter, addressed simply to them, as a memory of the days they spent together.
Dining and Cooking