Huon cookery school brings taste of southern Italy to Cygnet hills

A PASSIONATE cook and experienced teacher opens her family farmhouse to share secrets of traditional Puglian cuisine.

Giuliana White, right, with daughter Genevieve in the kitchen of their cooking school at Wattle Grove near Cygnet.

COOKS who leave their homelands often become custodians of their traditional cuisine, says Giuliana White, who runs a cookery school on a farm near Cygnet in the Huon Valley.

As the food of their birthplace changes over time – and not always for the better – migrants often become bearers of the old ways. It seems paradoxical, but distance can help to preserve customs.

Though she grew up in Hobart, Giuliana’s cooking style is deeply influenced by her Italian roots.

MORE: MASTERING AN ITALIAN CLASSIC

A Festa Italiana class at the Farmhouse Kitchen is inspired by the cuisine of Puglia, the southern region from which White is descended.

It is known for its simple and versatile Mediterranean-style food sometimes known as La Cucina Povera (peasant food).

“Couple poverty with fussy people and you end up with enormous variety,” she tells our Sunday class of six. “These southern Italians were poor, but the men would not eat leftovers, so the women were inventive, making new dishes from what was left. They did not waste anything.”

The class TasWeekend attends is not really a hands-on cooking experience. We help with a few tasks, but mostly Giuliana demonstrates. We need to move fast to cook in five hours what an Italian matriarch would take five days to prepare for important family occasions.

The home of the Farmhouse Kitchen cookery school is the White family’s beautiful old weatherboard home on the farm, which runs beef cattle and used to be a dairy.

Giuliana has a knack for creative teaching on the home front. A former classroom teacher, she spent 23 years homeschooling her four children. The cookery school marks a new era for her.

I find myself just as interested in her early life as her recipes. One of five children of Francesco and Francesca Longo, who migrated in 1959, she was raised in Elizabeth St when it was home to many Italian families. Though the Longos were poor, Giuliana wore a beautifully cut uniform made by her tailor father to St Mary’s school.

Giuliana says she could cook everything her mother made by the time she was 11 years old, learning by her side in their home behind her uncle’s shoe shop. Few recipes were ever written down. Starting the cooking school two years ago inspired Giuliana to start collating the hundreds of them she remembers, and sharing some with her students. The business won this year’s Oceania Travel and Hospitality Award for Learning Experience.

The kitchen is north-facing and spacious. It is the heart of the 150-year-old home on the Whites’ hilly 100ha farm, Willow Bend, where the former dairy farmers now run beef cattle and tend a big organic kitchen garden.

Giuliana’s youngest daughter, Genevieve, 20, assists on class days, and sustains us with hot drinks and cake along the way. A budding photographer, she shoots all the imagery for the cooking school as well.

Giuliana cooks on a big old electric St George stove and oven. She is not a fan of gas cooking, mostly because it’s harder with gas to achieve very low stovetop temperatures.

As well as gentle cooking temperatures, subtlety is a big feature of Puglian cooking,
she says.

“Meat cooking is the only place where strong herbs are used – because of the meats’ own strong flavour.”

Cannelloni with meat sauce hits the spot on a chilly Sunday. Cannelloni is made from scratch in sheets with the flavoursome beef mince rolled inside. Giuliana’s bechamel sauce method begins by mixing flour and cold milk to make a paste.

Because it will take hours to slow-cook, the class starts with the preparation of lamb for wet-roasting in a lidded cast-iron pan with red wine, rosemary, sage and pecorino cheese. As well as the agnello al forno (roasted lamb), we prepare a brodo di gallina con triddhi (chicken soup with semolina pasta), cannelloni with meat sauce, and zuppa inglese (a coffee and liqueur-infused dessert with cream filling – similar to tiramisu).

Our feast is served at the family dining table with a simple antipasto and green salad.

When we finally sit down to eat just after 2pm, I am brimming with new cooking techniques and renewed appreciation for the labour of love behind family feasts.

I plan to make cannelloni from scratch with my children one weekend soon. Meanwhile, I think of Giuliana every time I stir a smooth and speedy bechamel sauce her way.

The author was a guest of Farmhouse Kitchen