Tina and Leonaldo who have a house 2 doors up, asked us to come in their beautifully renovated rustic house. Carlo was mesmorized by the massive wood fired oven and when he found out it was built in 1841 said "I would love to cook pizza in this!!". The next evening that is exactly what happened, Carlo cooked us awesome pizza while all I could think about was how many meals had been cooked in this oven during its life time!! In kitchens you talk about pans being well seasoned, but undoubtly this would be the most seasoned oven I have ever cooked in and it still worked a treat!
We sat in front of the open fire place after dinner and indulged on roasted chestnuts, cooked over the hot flames. Leonaldo told us the history of Cantalena, our village, where he was born and lived until 5 when his family had to move to the city to make ends meet. The whole village was abandoned in the 1050's and left to deteriorate over the years. Leonaldo who now lives in Florence, always felt a close connection to Cantalena and started doing renovations to rebuild his run down home in 1996. During the evening he told us about his grand parents and parents lives. They had to walk to Cortona in those years to purchase the few essentials required for living that they could not produce themselves, such as candles, salt and sugar.
He then produced the log books of his ancestors dating back to 1811. Over the years there were records of their life possessions which equated to 3 cows 2 pigs and 8 sheep. Written in calligraphy, I was amazed at how beautiful the writing was.
Carlo and I are still talking about the wonderful evening that we enjoyed with our new friends, a night full of genuine hospitality, history and great food and wine of course!!
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