Meet Giulia Scarpaleggia, Tuscan Food Writer, Cookbook Author & Cooking Class Teacher

Issue #116

Dec 19, 2024

I first encountered Giulia Scarpaleggia’s writing through the Substack network, but she has been writing about food for more than 15 years. Her newsletter, Letters from Tuscany, was born as the next incarnation of her award-winning blog Juls Kitchen, which contains an archive of more than 700 recipes, many of which have been featured in her six cookbooks. The newest one, Cucina Povera, which features beautiful photographs by her husband Tommaso, is a constant source of inspiration rooted in Italy’s peasant cooking.

It doesn’t take long at all to warm up to Giulia. Her writing style is extremely approachable and sincere. Reading her newsletter feels like getting a note from a friend. So when I was organizing a trip to Tuscany for my own family and friends this year, I knew immediately that I wanted to bring them to Giulia’s home studio for a cooking class.

After reading her Substack for more than a year, I was really gratified to finally meet her in person—and I can attest that she’s just as warm and welcoming in real life as she is in her writing. So I’m really thrilled to share this interview with Giulia as part of my series of interviews with creatives and entrepreneurs in Italy.

You’ve been blogging for 15 years. Can you tell me how you started?

I started just for fun. I had been reading blogs for about a year. I think it was 2009. I was working in an office. I didn't enjoy my job that much, and I was searching for something that I could call mine, something where I could really put all my passion, and since I love cooking and eating, I thought, “Okay, let's try to have a blog.” I have always had an online presence. I had very old blogs that would last for a month or so, but that was just an experiment. And I said, “Let's try, if I can, to keep something alive for longer than a couple of months.”

And it’s been 15 years, 16 years in February, actually, that I've been blogging. And of course, it evolved over the years. It started as a journal where I would just share what I was cooking, what I was learning about cooking, and then it became a job. And now we moved—I say we because I work with Tommaso, my husband. So now we moved most of our recipes and stories to the newsletter, but the blog is still there.

Did you study cooking? Or did you learn everything from experience?

By cooking, by eating. My favorite thing is eating. Since I love eating, and my mom was not a great chef when I was growing up, if I wanted to cook something special, I had to learn how to make it. My grandmother was the best cook in the family, so I got my passion for cooking from her—the curiosity for trying new recipes, new flavor combinations.

Even though my grandmother was very traditional, she was very curious, very open to trying new things. And I got this from her. I studied marketing and communication, so something completely different, even though, if you look at it from this perspective, that helped me with the blog and everything, but cooking, it's all trial and error. I learned by cooking, reading cookbooks, watching videos and everything.

When did you start teaching cooking classes?

It's been 14 years of giving cooking classes. My very first cooking class was with a couple from Australia in this room where I am now. My parents used to rent this apartment for summer holidays to tourists, and they were searching for someone who could give them a cooking class. I had been blogging for about a year, so I had a very shallow knowledge of cuisine at the time, but I knew a couple of recipes. So I told them I would give them cooking classes.

I was still working in an office, and so after work, I came here and taught them how to make gnudi. We taught them spinach gnudi, we made crostoni with tomatoes, and we made tiramisù. And that was a success. They were very grateful for the time spent together. And I was so excited, I came back home and I texted my mentor, Judy Witts Francini—she's been giving classes here since the ‘80s—and she was insisting, “You have to leave your job and start doing cooking classes.”

I wasn't brave enough to leave my job, but my job ended after one year, because it was an apprenticeship contract. The job ended, and I was celebrating, and my friends thought I was having a mental breakdown because I was celebrating being fired, but that gave me the push I needed to try.

My family and friends loved your class. You and I planned the menu in advance, but usually it's a bit more spontaneous, right?

Exactly. I really enjoy the surprise of finding new ingredients, seasonal ingredients, and new combinations. Now I'm confident enough to decide the menu on the day of the class. In the beginning, it was a fixed menu. I had a set of recipes that I knew that could work in the time frame, that could work together and everything. And now it's a little bit more spontaneous, because I try to put people together.

Your family was a large group, but we have up to eight people in our class, and so they can be four couples, and I really want to make at least one dish that they really want to make, and so have to be flexible in order to meet all their expectations and preferences or allergies. So I found that the best way to do this is to invent a menu together based on seasonal ingredients.

You also grow vegetables, don't you?

Yes, in the summer, we have a summer vegetable garden. It's my mom taking care of the vegetable garden, usually, and I have pots of herbs and everything. So with that, plus the pantry that I really rely a lot on, plus the seasonal vegetables, you can cook basically endless recipes.

What are some of the most popular dishes for the cooking classes?

Fresh pasta is always the first request. They love fresh pasta, and it can be everything from pici to orecchiette. My grandfather and my husband's mom were from the south of Italy, so we have influences from Puglia and Basilicata, especially in the pasta section.

Olive oil cake that I like to make seasonal just by adding seasonal fruit. But olive oil cake is one of the most common things we make.

And then we try cheese and appetizers, like prosciutto and melon when it's summer. I really try to change the menu as much as possible. But there is always fresh pasta, and then often it's olive oil cake.

I love your book, Cucina Povera. And I sometimes look through the recipes, either in the book or in the archives of Juls kitchen, and I love how approachable they are. You don't need a lot of equipment. You don't need to know a lot of difficult techniques. They mostly come from traditional Tuscan recipes or regional recipes from other parts of Italy, right?

Yeah, exactly. This is the way I like to cook. Actually, I just realized that in the last 15 years of my life, I haven't had a lot of time to cook. I'm always in a hurry, always trying to cook something in 30 minutes. And so this is actually how I cook simple recipes. Most of the ingredients are either fresh and seasonal or from the pantry. And since I'm not a chef, techniques are very simple.

So it's a simple way of eating where the quality of ingredients is paramount. Because if you start with great ingredients, then you have great dishes. There are no sauces or difficult techniques hiding the quality of ingredients. If you start with good ingredients, you have a good dish.

This is kind of the principle of cucina povera, right? In general, when we talk about this style of cooking...

Absolutely. It's a way of cooking with what you have that is seasonal and it's respectful, because you don't want to throw anything away, so you use every single crumb left of your bread, or there's a nose-to-tail approach to consuming meat, lots of beans and chickpeas and fava beans. Because, of course, cucina povera is often based on peasant cuisine, and so no meat included, but lots of vegetable protein and plant-based recipes.

Lots of ways to use stale bread, which I appreciate.

Yeah, exactly. You respect the ingredients, and so you try to use everything and turn every single scrap into a new dish, or just mix leftovers and create a new dish to respect what you have. You use what is seasonal, what is close to you from the farm, like eggs and chicken and rabbit—this kind of meat is very common—sustainable fish, like anchovies, and beans. I think it's traditional, but it's also very modern, because this is how we should eat.

It's sustainable, right? No waste.

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Can you tell me a little bit about the new cookbook you're working on?

So this will be out in 2026, same publisher, so still artisan, and it will be about vegetables. That's all I can say.

Also, since you mentioned cooking from the pantry, what are a few items that are always in your pantry?

Extra virgin olive oil, usually more than one bottle, because there's maybe an average olive oil—always extra virgin—that I use for cooking, and a better quality olive oil that I use for drizzling over salad, soups or bread. For example, bread and olive oil is a treat for me.

Dry pasta. During my cooking classes, everyone asks me, “Do you make fresh pasta every day?” No, not even just for special occasions. I eat a lot of dry pasta. There are so many good brands that make extraordinary dry pasta in Italy. So dry pasta, not just normal dry pasta, but also whole wheat or chickpea pasta. It’s very easy to incorporate proteins into a single dish, if you use chickpea pasta. Rice for risotto. Canned tuna. I really love canned tuna. You can really solve a meal with canned tuna.

Usually, I make jams during the summer. Tomato preserves, either homemade or peeled tomatoes or puréed tomatoes, which are the base of so many dishes. Garlic and onions, dried mushrooms, anchovies, capers, sun dried tomatoes—all those elements that are so typical of Southern cuisine, they give a lot of taste to dishes. I usually buy capers, olives, and sun dried tomatoes in Puglia, where we visit Tommaso’s family.

You guys also make some of your own olive oil, don’t you?

Yeah, every year is different. There are years when we produce more or years when we produce less, like this year, but we keep that for special salads or just to drizzle over bread. That's a treat for me, and it's also one of those things I can serve to my daughter. She's four years old. She's a little bit picky, but bread and olive oil, that's something that you know can always solve a dinner.

I think that people having their own olive oil is one of the most beautiful things about Italy. In the United States that does not exist at all. I mean, olive oil comes from the supermarket, and you don't know how it's made or what goes into it. So, when I moved here and started having more Italian friends, I started to see that everybody has their own olive oil or if it's not theirs, it's made by their uncle or some family member. Like, here in my house, we have olive oil made by my husband's uncle, who lives out in the countryside of Lazio.

And also, you know what I’ve been seeing lately? Younger generations, maybe they don't have an olive grove, but they can rent it. So for example, my cousin doesn't have an olive grove, but with her partner, they rented an olive grove where they can go pick the olives, and then they share the amount of olive oil they produce. And so basically they work for a couple of weekends in these olive groves and they get their own olive oil because they help to pick the olives. I think this is just great.

I also want to talk a little bit about your Substack, because that's also a big part of what you do, and it's sort of the next version of the blog, right? So how do you decide what to write about?

I have a little booklet where I write ideas. Often I get these ideas talking with people during cooking classes. So to take a step back, I have two newsletters. One is in Italian for Italians. One is in English for English readers. So these are two different audiences. For the moment, it’s the same newsletter. So I write first in English, then I translate to Italian.

From January, I will try to separate them as much as possible. The one in Italian will be more focused on my job, so on the way I explain Italy to non-Italians, on my job as a cooking class teacher, and on food writing in general, because food writing is such a new theme for Italy. I mean, not that new, but definitely newer than for English-speaking countries where food writing is recognized as a word. There's not a word for food writing in Italian. So I want to move the Italian newsletter toward a new direction.

My English newsletter will follow the same path and will have recipes, cook alongs once a month, and a new column that will be about our Tuscan cooking school. So every month there will be a monthly issue about what we cook or who we meet during classes. So kind of a cookbook that we'll be writing once a month based on our work at the cooking school.

The ideas come from the people we meet, from their questions, from conversations we have with them. And ideas also come from the market—seasonal recipes inspired by what I can find at the market.

I love how you sometimes write about your travels as well. You've written about your vacations in Abruzzo or in Puglia, like a postcard. You've also written a little bit about overtourism and some of the problems facing places like Florence, for example. And offer some suggestions for how we can mitigate these issues, which is something that I think about a lot, because I'm always writing about places like Tuscany and Florence. And I'm constantly thinking: How can I write about Florence and encourage people to go there when it's already so crowded and it's causing so many problems? What do you think? Do you think there is something else that can be done to mitigate this issue with over tourism?

This is something we discuss a lot with friends living in Florence and Tommaso is from Florence. I think the biggest responsibility is a government responsibility. They should change the way they connect different cities and the services they offer, because if I tell everyone to come visit my town because it's less crowded, but there's not a good service connecting Florence and my town, it's impossible for people to come here for a day if they don't have a car. So the first problem is at a higher level, and it's not connected to the way we share a place, but to the way the place is organized.

That said, I think we have to look at what is around us to see what could be interesting for people, even in a low season or in a different location. And also, what I really loved about my last vacation in the south of Italy last summer was traveling like in the ‘80s, let's say. I was not looking for Instagram pictures. I was really fascinated by the everyday life of people.

And if you start searching for that, you exit from the biggest city centers, from where everything is perfect and you search for more natural places, and they still have something interesting to tell you. It's about the people who live there every day. And maybe they are not Instagram worthy, but they are definitely interesting, and they can tell you more about the real Italy, or the challenges that people in Italy face every day compared to a beautiful luxury resort where Italians cannot even afford to go.

Maybe you can find Italy in the little, not-so-perfect hotel on the coast, where you meet other Italians. That was like a revelation for me. I was forced by the logic of Instagram to search for places where I could take pictures that would look good on Instagram. And then I realized I was ignoring what was real. It was in front of me, and so that really opened my eyes. And I think that's the way you should travel—for the experience, to meet local people rather than researching a nice picture.

Yeah, that's how I also like to travel when I'm free to choose where I'm going, instead of being sent somewhere for an assignment. And I found that it does resonate with readers. I think even the American and foreign readers that are not Italian, that wouldn't necessarily know about these small towns, they seem to be interested to learn more about them.

But then, you come back to the first problem. They have to have a way to access those towns or to know about them. So yes, it's part of our responsibility as writers, but also the government has to connect places, they have to offer services, and then from there, you can really hope to make a difference.

So what are some of your favorite more under-the-radar places in Tuscany or even elsewhere in Italy that you think readers should know about or consider visiting?

I have to mention my town. Colle Val d'Elsa is close to San Gimignano, Volterra, Florence, Siena, Chianti, but it's not Chianti. It's not San Gimignano. It is a beautiful medieval village that is basically quite empty. In recent years, some new shops opened by local artisans and there's a Michelin two-star restaurant. And this has brought a lot of interesting restaurants—not just fine dining, but also very honest trattorias, good producers. So food wise, my town is so interesting, even though it's a little town in the middle of Val d’Elsa.

From here, I like to drive to Radicondoli, which is even more remote than Colle Val d’Elsa. It’s half an hour from here, in the middle of nowhere, but the drive is beautiful, and the village is very nice. And what you get there is one of the best pizzerias in Italy: La Pergola. They make an outstanding pizza.

What I like about these little villages is that they're also trying to offer something for their citizens. So for example, in Radicondoli, there are lots of events during Christmas time, lots of Christmas markets, street food events with the local chefs. So it's very interesting also to live here, not just for tourists.

I like Maremma. Maybe it used to be wild. Now it's more known, but it's definitely not as known as other parts of Tuscany and the coast there is beautiful. I like San Vincenzo, where there are some of my favorite restaurants, for example, La Perla Del Mar in San Vincenzo.

If I have to talk about a region that is not as known, I love Basilicata, where my grandfather was from. So now everybody knows Matera, because Matera has been in the Meg Gibson movie and it was the European Capital of culture in 2019, so that attracted a lot of tourists, but Matera is just unique. It’s breathtaking. And you have the Dolomiti lucane, so the mountains, and you have the coast. Very good food, very warm people. So I really love Basilicata as well.

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Meet Giulia Scarpaleggia, Tuscan Food Writer, Cookbook Author & Cooking Class Teacher

Issue #116

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