Convinced that a cookery holiday would encourage her two young sons to get on better, Lucy Cavendish took the bitter rivals to Italy.
It all starts over pasta. Or to be more precise, the making of pasta. Cosimo, the rather glamorous chef who is taking the cooking class at the Masseria Torre Coccaro in Italy – a wonderful 16th-century former-farm-turned-hotel that also has a cookery school – is showing my eldest two children how to make fresh pasta.
“You use 200g of semolina flour,” he says, pouring a mound of fine flour on to the raised worktop. “Then you add 50g of warm water, some salt and then you…”
At this point, all I can hear is muttering.
“It’s my flour,” says Raymond, aged 12, grabbing a bag that is in front of him.
“No, mine,” retorts Leonard, aged six, grabbing the other end of it.
“I’m making pasta,” says Raymond, tugging away.
“So am I,” says Leonard, tugging further.
Luckily, Cosimo spots them before the bag breaks and the flour spills everywhere.
“We’re also making pizza,” he says hopefully.
“Pizza!” yell the boys, promptly dropping the bag of flour and turning towards each other looking delighted.
This is what happens when you have two sons of different ages, and why the three of us have come on holiday together to Puglia, a region that possesses more olive trees than people. We have left behind 50 per cent of our family – my husband, a younger boy and a two-year-old girl – as I decided it would be good for the two most bitter of rivals to spend some enforced time together without the other members of our family butting in.
This is not, however, any holiday. On this holiday we are going to do things, learn things, see things. We are going to cook and ride horses and learn about the Puglian way of life. We are going to visit the town of Alberobello, with its famous trulli houses. We are going to ride bicycles in the nature park of Torre Guaceto. We are going to visit a farm full of buffalo and watch how they make mozzarella, and all this has been organised by the owners of the peaceful Masseria Torre Coccaro, a hotel that has been converted from a traditional farmstead, which lies near the sea equidistant between Brindisi and Bari.
The boys are very impressed with the hotel. They like the air con, the swimming pool, the food, but, most of all, they like the satellite television. As soon as we get in to our spacious room, they collapse on the large double bed and turn it on.
“Mr Bean!” says Raymond.
“Turn it off,” I say.
I then lecture them on why we are here. “We are going to be Italian for a week,” I say sternly. They both nod and start giggling.
So, in the true Italian way, we spend our first day cooking. I am delighted about this for I intend to eat as much as possible while I am here. I love Italian food and Puglia is well known for its fish dishes and its creamy, locally produced cheese. The sister hotel to the Masseria Torre Coccaro, the Torre Maizza, is also renowned for its simple, modern versions of Italian specialities. We eat there one night and have lots of different fresh tuna-based dishes, which are so delicious, even the children love them.
The next day is cooking day and Cosimo seems to have a way with warring children. Before the battle of the pasta flour, Cosimo takes us into the local market town of Monopoli. The children “ooh” and “aah” over the vast array of vegetables and fruits on display. Then Leonard spots the fish stalls. “Octopus!” he yells. The non-English speaking man behind the stall seems to understand his excitement and promptly picks up the huge octopus and puts it in Leonard’s arms. Raymond then goes over and inspects the poor dead squid, displayed in sad little rows.“I’m not eating that,” he says.
Cosima tempts them away with the lure of fresh cherries and sweet tomatoes. He also shows them how to choose the vegetables.“If you are choosing aubergines, you need to get a lady one and a man one,” he says. He then shows what he means (it’s all to do with the shape). Then he gets them to lift the tomatoes to their noses and take long deep exhalations before they choose which ones to buy.
By the time we get back to the hotel, having stopped off at the buffalo farm and chosen our favourite mozzarella, the boys are buzzing. They have been to Cozza da Bed Bed mussel shop – the name of it made them giggle – to get shell fish. They stroked goats, pigs and buffalo at the farm. They are hot but ready to cook.
Cosimo manages to stop them from making a pizza then and there and persuades them to give the pasta a go. The process initially seems too complicated.
“I can’t do this,” says Leonard, as the dough he is supposed to be rolling out to a thin film sticks once again on his rolling pin.
“It is too wet,” says Cosimo. “You need more flour.”
Raymond also finds it nigh on impossible. He manages to roll his dough out but then fails to do something that Cosimo, in his demonstration, made look totally idiot-proof.
“You lay the pasta on this board,” he says, showing us a board strung with close-lying wires, “and you push the dough through the wire.” He does this with professional flair and there, at the bottom of the tray, magical strings of perfect, thin pasta appear. “See?” he says.
But, try as he might, Raymond cannot persuade his dough to go through the wires.
“More flour!” says Cosimo, and persuades the children to keep trying until, eventually, they both manage to produce a mound of pasta strings of their own.
“Mine are worms!” says Leonard delightedly. Even Raymond looks pleased as Cosimo takes the mounds away to be cooked.
Next it is the pizzas. They are far more simple.
“You make the dough,” says Cosimo, extravagantly pouring flour all over the place. “Then you pummel it with your hands…” He spins his dough around. “And then you have a pizza base, yes?”
We all nod and then start making our own, which turn out to be surprisingly good. Leonard then douses his dough with piles of tomato sauce, as does Raymond. Then they get about every ingredient they can find – ham, Parmesan, mozzarella, basil – and throw it on top of their doughy mounds. “Salt and oil!” yells Cosimo as the boys go off to get their pizzas cooked in the outdoor bread oven. Minutes later the pizzas appear. By now we are starving. We eat the lot. Then the boys’ pasta appears, now dressed with a seafood topping.
“Yum,” says Raymond happily munching away. Leonard is so excited he can barely speak.
For the next few days, an eerie calm takes hold of the boys. They ride horses together happily. They cycle together around the hotel complex. They swim in the sea. They ask interested questions about life inside the trulli houses.
“How did they all fit in to one house?” Leonard asks our guide when we look through the door of a tiny one. “They are bigger than you think,” the guide says, showing us the tiny back rooms some of the houses possess. One house is full of kittens. The boys fall on them with delight. After that, there is no stopping them. They help pick vegetables in the hotel garden. They marvel at the old chapel still in the grounds of the Masseria where you can get married, and they stalk the Italian actors who appear at the hotel to shoot a wedding scene for a feature film.
“Shall I make them a pizza?” whispers Leonard loudly when he sees the fancy film food being laid out.
“No,” I say.
“Why not?” says Raymond defensively. “Leonard makes good pizzas.”
“So do you,” says Leonard and they look at each other happily.
Peace lasts until the flight home when a fight breaks out about who will sit next to the window, but then, I have had three days of wonderful calm, enjoying a particularly interesting and relaxing style of Italian life. And I know something now. If I ever again want my children to get on with each other, I will have to come back here, to the Masseria Torre Caccaro in the heart of Puglia. I can’t wait.
GETTING THERE
British Airways (0844 493 0787; www.ba.com) and Ryanair (0906 270 5656; www.ryanair.com) both have regular flights from London to Bari and Brindisi, which are just a short trip from Masseria Torre Coccaro.
STAYING THERE
Prices at the Masseria Torre Coccaro (0039 080 482 9310; www.apuliacollection.com) are from £113 per person, per night, based on two sharing a double room including breakfast; also check the website for some great special offers.
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