Alessio Tessieri and the Tessieri School project

Discovering the atelier of culinary arts in Tuscany with its founder

What is the aim of the Scuola Tessieri project?

To train young professionals who enter the world of catering not as simple manual workers, but as qualified personnel with the creativity, enthusiasm and curiosity that the sector needs. Scuola Tessieri aims to be a Renaissance workshop where in addition to the top level teaching aspect, young people experience dealing with raw materials, techniques and also today’s equipment. ‘Hands-on’ training, as we like to say, with tailor-made cooking and pastry-making courses and internships.

For professionals there are also your masterclasses with truly exceptional names.

For cooking we have chosen great interpreters of local cuisine such as Valeria Piccini and Gaetano Trova; for pastry-making, a true Tuscan such as Rossano Vinciarelli, but also Vincenzo Tiri, super-awarded in the world of panettone, Paul Occhipinti, France’s youngest MOF Chocolatier-Confiseu, and many others.

Tuscany in a menu from appetizers to dessert.

For an appetizer I would start with chicken livers and sage sautéed with Vinsanto on toasted bread, followed by a first course of pappa al pomodoro in summer or ribollita, a dense vegetable soup, in winter. For the main course, game, particularly wild boar in ‘dolceforte’ sauce with Noalya chocolate. To finish, as a cocoa grower and producer of chocolate here in what is called Tuscany’s Chocolate Valley, a tasting of Noalya, the cultivated chocolate, a noble ingredient in confectionary making.

Future projects?

I would like to develop the chocolate school even more, a culture that still has ample room for growth in Italy, despite the fact that it seems cocoa was first brought to Europe by a Florentine, Francesco Carletti.