Cooking class: We prepare orecchiette with vegetables from the garden

About this tour

Learn to shape orecchiette by hand in a centuries-old Apulian farmhouse where you'll harvest vegetables straight from the garden beds and turn them into lunch. This three-hour class strips back to basics—no shortcuts, no pre-made dough—giving you the techniques locals use to build flavour from soil to table. You'll eat what you cook in the farmhouse courtyard, tasting how ingredient quality rewrites the dish entirely.

Highlights

• Hand-roll orecchiette pasta from scratch
• Pick seasonal vegetables directly from garden
• Cook alongside a local Apulian home cook
• Eat your finished dishes on the farmhouse grounds
• Learn regional pasta-making traditions firsthand
• Historic working farmhouse setting

What to expect

You'll arrive at a traditional farmhouse and begin in the garden, selecting the day's vegetables. Back inside the kitchen, your host walks you through orecchiette-shaping—the thumb-and-finger technique that takes muscle memory more than explanation. Expect flour dust, some wonky shapes on your first attempts, and the satisfaction of getting it right by the final batch. Once your pasta is ready, you'll cook it together and sit down to a proper lunch where you taste the difference between what you've just made and supermarket alternatives. The pace is unhurried; this is about understanding method, not rushing through steps.

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