Cooking in San Miniato

Debra Kolkka

3 years ago

San Miniato has joined a list of places I like to visit often. I had an excellent reason for my latest visit. Emiko Davies, a delightful food lover I follow on Instagram has recently opened Enoteca Marilu with her husband in the centre of the town. It will soon be open for wine tastings and aperitivo. Right now Emiko has begun her cooking classes.

One day soon (autumn) I would like to do one of her market cooking classes, but I started with a class by Saghar Setareh, an Iranian writer and food photographer who has written a gorgeous book about her culinary journey from Iran to Italy, Pomegranates & Artichokes.

In the book’s description …” Pomegranates & Artichokes is the story of Saghar’s own culinary journey from Iran to Italy, in which she describes the parallels that link Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food cultures, and shows how ingredients and recipes, unconstrained by borders, are shared and transformed through the immigrant experience.”

It is a beautiful book and Saghar’s cooking lesson took us through some of the recipes in it, beginning with breakfast. Emiko had prepared a morning tea with delicious milk bread served with rose petal jam and butter along with plates of Fattah,made by Marco (Emiko’s husband), covered with garlic yoghurt sauce, warm chick peas, mint and pine nuts.

Saghar made her grandmother’s bicoloured sweet tea.

The gathered group of enthusiastic food lovers helped prepare baked apples filled with mincemeat, walnuts, raisins, and spices including saffron, cinnamon and cardamom.

We also made stuffed tomatoes and eggplant.

Best of all, we got to eat everything we helped prepare.

To finish off the feast there was a cheat’s version of traditional Iranian ice cream. Saghar actually made it at the beginning of the class so it could be put back in the freezer. She began with a store bought ice cream, slightly melted, and added saffron infusion, pistachio nuts, rose water and rose petals.