Dear readers, hello! My name is Vittoria Caterina Giachi, and I am a simple Tuscan girl who has a thousand dreams in her drawer. I am only sixteen years old but I am ready, like Leopardi, to climb over an imposing hedge to discover the mysterious world that lies beyond it: a world shaped like me, a secret trapped in a glass casket. Since I was a child I have lived surrounded by vines and olive trees, in a medieval village in the Tuscan countryside: San Gimignano.

In my short portion of life I have had the opportunity to travel far and wide, from East to West, from North to South. I love exploring countries and cities, savoring foreign cultures and traditions, always new, and then being overwhelmed by the intense scents of each civilization.

My vocation for cooking

One of my greatest passions, which has grown with me since the beginning of my days, is cooking. As Julia Child said when asked why she liked to cook: “Because after a day in which nothing is certain in which nothing is certain, and when I say nothing I mean n-i-e-n-t-e, one comes home and knows for sure
that by adding egg yolks, sugar, and milk to chocolate, the mixture thickens: it’s such a convenience!”

I have always loved to cook, even as a child I admired my grandmother and the care with which she rolled out the dough for tagliatelle. For the Christmas vacations I often travel and rarely have the chance spend a traditional dinner with my family, but I remember well how much fun I had as a child to dipping my finger into some old pots and pans! Once I got older, my vocation for cooking was amplified.

When it comes to desserts, I’m a real truffle hunter! I love to eat, it represents for me an explosion of senses that slowly spreads to every nook and cranny,
satisfying my most intense desires. Imagine all this experienced together with your loved ones loved ones: a perfect combination of food and love.

My first cookbook

During this last period of quarantine, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, I felt in me a passion rising, that I had never felt before: good food and its many nuances. So I committed myself to a project that was very big for me: to hand down to future generations the culinary culture of the ancient and powerful past generations. After finding an ancient diary from a few hundred years ago, buried among the countless shelves of the tower where I live together with my family, I wanted to experiment with those recipes from the past, readapting them to my lifestyle, making them more contemporary and replacing those ingredients used in the past, once too heavy.

This is why I created my new cookbook “About San Gimignano”, my journey through the secrets of cooking. my journey through the secrets of tuscan cuisine”, with which I began my journey as a young cook. I started this blog to go beyond a simple cookbook and share with the world the roots of my beloved Italy. I hope you will follow me on this exciting journey and that I hope that you will follow me on this tantalizing journey and that you will be just as elated, more than I already am, at the beauty that Italian Cuisine can offer us.