Cover photo taken from the Historiam Florence website
Just below the medieval church of Santa Margherita a Montici, there is a garden that was designed in the shape of half of the Florentine lily.
We are in the park of the last inhabited house of the Prime Minister and Senator Giovanni Spadolini, today home to the library he wanted, the Foundation that bears his name and the magazine Nuova Antologia.
It is Sunday morning, the bells are ringing. The bell tower is right above us, behind the branches of the trees. The view is Florence.
In front of us the Pian dei Giullari hill with the Torre del Gallo Castle. At its feet the whole city.
This garden is the creation of some ladies, lovers of culture and dedicated to the preservation and revaluation of ancient culinary techniques.
Lovers of perfection, they have developed some sauces, taking the recipes from the book by Marcus Gavium Apicius “De re culinaria”, from the 1st century AD, highlighting their modernity. A meticulous work of calibrating the ingredients (there are no quantities in the ancient recipes), as well as researching them; then supported by biological tests and conservation tests. Yes, because the conservation is completely natural: there are no chemical agents but it is the active ingredients contained in the plants and herbs that maintain health safety and organoleptic properties.
Simonetta with Lorella e Francesca – Francesca, Lorella, Marcella
That’s why a garden: a paradise for bees and other pollinating insects. Here are grown common aromatic herbs and others that are difficult to find, but widely used to spice dishes of our ancestors.
The work of Francesca Ricci and Lorella Buti has not only a cultural value, but also and above all, a scientific value: how and how much herbs and combinations of herbs and foods can increase our health, strengthen the immune system, heal inflammation and, without fear of exaggeration, prevent chronic diseases and tumors. On the other hand, we “moderns” were not the first ones to understand that food can give us or take away our health: ancient scholars, even if with different principles, based their medicine on this assumption.
The grass of the Madonna: it should be peeled and used as a healing and anti-inflammatory agent on wounds, more or less like aloe vera.
basil-mint and e oregano
the new and tender leaves of the red poppy can be cooked and mixed into vegetable pie doughs; rue – ruta -, used by the Romans, is today used to flavour some grappas
Salvastrella, with a characteristic nutty flavour; Salvia Minima, with a swallowtail butterfly
Timo Longicalius and Aneto
Hyssop from Creta and Levisticum
We are working on a special program to propose to Gigliocooking students: we will learn to use sauces with unique flavors, never tried before; we will visit the garden and fall asleep in the shadow of the bell tower…
