A Foodies Dream – Part Two: On the way to Food Camp in Cilento, Italy.

After our stay in Bolzano we made our way to the Cilento region, where Florian Siepert from Foodtri.ps organised the Food Camp Cilento 2011. For lunch we made a stop in Tuscany for some homemade Spaghetti Bolognese (which, as I learned later, isn’t proper for that you should use bigger pasta in order to stick to the meat sauce) and a Spritz at Il Conte Matto in Trequanda.

We spent 5 days in at the very nice Hotel Antonietta in San Marco di Castellabate which embodies the beautiful stereotype of how I imagine Italy: hills, sea, olive trees, warm nights, loud teenagers on the piazza and drunk Germans (I was among them) also on the piazza! Florian had organised for us to use the Hotel kitchen, so we cooked and ate on the premises.

We tasted wine from local vineyards, one we bought wine from, Bruno De Concilis, a Miles Davis fan who named his sparkling wine after him but spelled it backwards.
We were shown how to make ricotta cheese, foccacia, figs bread by Giovanna and Laetitia at the Agriturismo Corbella in the National Parc of Cilento.
We took part in making buffalo mozzarella at the Barlotti Farm, where we enjoyed our lunch at the farm while breathing through the mouth as the breeze would bring the smell of the stables towards us.
The trip also included visits to a local oil producer Olio Torretta, to the amazing pasta maker Guiseppe di Martino in Gragnano, who passionately talked about pasta and who produces 5 stars pasta, delivering to starred chefs. Thanks to him I will never see Pasta the same way.
Some of us went squid fishing and octopus hunting.
In a word, it was a fantastic, rich trip and great food topped with an amazing group.

To avoid overloading you with photos and text, I’ll split up the trip in several Posts.

Leaving Bolzano – hello Tuscany!

On the way from Bolzano to Tuscany.

Lunch at Il Conte Matto, homemade Spaghetti Bolognese and Aperol Spritz.

San Marco di Castellabate – Cilento, The Food Camp!

The first day at San Marco, we went food shopping at the Santa Maria Market and bought enough to feed more than 45 people for the evening. At the hotel, once everybody arrived, once the introductions were made and the groups formed (to decide who cooks what and when) we were to meet in the kitchen and start cooking.


After the shopping in Santa Maria, we headed back to the hotel where we prepared a meal for the whole group. Here, cleaning the fish, which we stuffed with herbs and grilled. It turned out to be a bit of a disaster.


Some cooked in the kitchen, some on the roof top of the hotel…la dolce vita!


The antipasti group, on the left with Natalie Simons from blog Pastasciutta. They prepared delicious grilled vegetables and bruschetta.

Homemade pasta with clams and herbs.

Giovanna Voria at the Agriturismo Corbella in the National Parc of Cilento:

Homemade orrechiette, fusilli, tagliatelle or linguine aren’t a secret for us anymore. We got to taste fried pizza dough with roasted tomatoes, braised salad with olives, figs bread, ricotta cheese with bays or confit orange, marinated fresh figs in wine and chickpeas in chocolate and bay leaf. The warm breeze, the beautiful landscape of the National Parc, the setting of the place almost made us forget the shooting noise in the background from the bore hunting.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

4 Responses

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.