Heather Jarman

Throughout Heather’s several careers eating, drinking and cooking have been abiding passions. As an archaeologist researching the early history of agriculture, Heather spent more time in Mediterranean markets and cooking for the excavators than in the trenches. While General Manager of the Academy of Ancient Music and Personal Manager of Christopher Hogwood, she researched and cooked sixteenth- to eighteenth-century feasts to suit the music performed at concerts. For the sheer joy of it, she cooked alternate Sundays at the Good Food Guide restaurant The Old Fire Engine House in Ely, disturbing the equilibrium by demanding unusual ingredients for historical English dishes. More interested in eating than publicity, Heather nevertheless did occasional programmes on eighteenth-century cuisine for the BBC and organized the Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum into cooking their own seventeenth-century banquet. She was a founder member of the Cambridge Convivium of Slow Food, organized Neal’s Yard Dairy’s appearance at Slow Food Cheese in Bra, Italy, in September 2005 and their sold-out cheese workshops in London. None of this can compare in job satisfaction to introducing like-minded food-lovers to the traditional flavours and knowledge of the Garfagnana.

Andrea Bertucci

Owner of the Slow Food osteria Il Vecchio Mulino in Castelnuovo, Andrea has done more than anyone else to put the traditional food of the Garfagnana on the gastronomic map of Italy. He was born on Lago Pontecosi just up the Serchio River from Castelnuovo. ‘I came out of the lake mud’, he says, making it sound like the primordial soup. His mother was an excellent cook and his family had a smallholding with chickens, rabbits and pigs. His face lights up at the memory of the great day each year when his grandfather slaughtered the pig that had been fattened on kitchen leftovers — lucky porker. The women made biroldo, while the men tended to the prosciuttos, sausages and lardo.

In his early 20s he strayed to Lombardy to manufacture explosives for those magnificent Italian autostradas that emulate the straightness of Roman roads by boring straight through mountains. But by 1986 he was homesick and came back to the Garfagnana and started Il Vecchio Mulino, for which he selects the best wines of Tuscany and the best food of the Garfagnana (making an exception for the gigantic mortadella from Bologna). On most visits he brings a new discovery to the table for us to taste — a leek preserve or a cheese he’s matured himself. As the founder of the Garfagnana Slow Food convivium and with a finger in most gastronomic pies, he has probably done as much for the cause of biodiversity and the rural economy as the regional government and the EU put together. For myself, I’m especially proud of his tribute to me: ‘For me, Erica [my name in Italian] is the Number 1 gourmet girl in the Garfagnana. She’s really serious about finding out about the origins of our food and how it’s made.’

Gianluca Pardini

Gianluca Pardini is a native of Lucca. By the age of 21, he was working in the only Italian restaurant in Orleans. This French experience opened up international doors that eventually led him to Japan as a gastronomic consultant. When he returned to Italy, he opened his own restaurant in Lucca.

Since 1998, Gianluca has dedicated himself to teaching the art of Italian cooking not only in his own International Academy of Italian Cuisine in Lucca and Siena, but also throughout Europe, Japan and the USA. His consummate skill married to an informal teaching style, hands-on approach and engaging sense of humour endears him to all his students. In 2004 the Italian Cooking Federation awarded him Master of Cooking and Executive Chef, one of only three in Tuscany.

Photographers

A special thanks to all the photographers, both professional and amateur, who have contributed photographs to the website: Marion Edwards · Duncan Fielden · Andrew Houston · Brian Marshall · John Morrison · Nick Morrison · O’Connor · Harold Partain · Nina Peskett · Dan Santoro · Robyn Vulinovich