Just days before going to Sardinia for the first time I picked up a Gourmet magazine from a display at the Safeway checkout counter because it promised an intimate look at Sardinian life and cuisine. I was excited. I wanted to learn all about it.

I’ve never read so much crap in my life.

The author asserted that Sardinia was the poorest land mass in Western Europe. While that might have been true at the time, he mistakenly pointed to shepherds huts as proof. Oh, the poor hovels Sardinians were stuck with!

I was to learn a few days later that Sardinian shepherds weren’t as poor as the author made them out to be, and furthermore the shepherds huts you see scattered across the Sardinian landscape were used mostly in sweltering afternoons, when the sheep were too hot to move from under the shade of the tree they were huddled under. What more could a shepherd want than his own private place out of the sun with his stack of porn, a couple liters of wine and somewhere to rest? After all, he had a place in town, too. A real house. But it was too far to go when the mercury was stuck to the top of the thermometer.

Thus began my mistrust of major media. A budget, a rental car, and a week on a large island does not bestow upon you the keys of a culture that has steeped for thousands of hears in an ancient landscape from which eking out a living is as hard as the rocky soil.

Then there was the case of grilled shrimp served along grilled grapefruit slices represented as “typical Sardinian cuisine.”

Well, that went way too far. Especially since I found out that this “typical dish” was served in the restaurant of a gated resort—meaning real working class Sardinians weren’t even welcome. Well, maybe to clean the toilets.

Real Sardinian cuisine is fabulous and robust, as befits an island of hard-working folks.

Which brings us to the article Why Gordon Ramsay swears by Tuscan cooking

The author doesn’t actually answer the question posed in the title. Well, not to my satisfaction anyway. Yes, it’s cute; Ramsay swears a lot—even in the monastery that’s being renovated for the resort he’s lending his name to. Castel Monastero will offer cooking classes to the well-heeled.

Let’s talk about the food:

Ramsay shows us how to make lobster spaghetti with clams and chilli (sic) and a lamb risotto – two classically simple Tuscan dishes.

Two Tuscan dishes I’ve never heard of. Classic? C’mon.

What it seems Gordon Ramsay is doing is usurping Tuscan Cuisine to misrepresent it to rich folks for whom cooking, like modern warfare, is a spectator sport these days. You can get fed for a song at Ramsay’s new Siena project: A two-hour course including three-course lunch or dinner will set you back a mere €170

Of course, Ramsay is unlikely to be there, but if you have that kind of money for lunch perhaps the point is moot. You can bask in the aura of the master. Or something.

Yesterday we had lunch at the Ristorante Venelia in Monti. The meal consisted of the real classic cuisine of Tuscany. I had Paparadelli con Cinghiale, wide noodles with wild boar sauce. Martha had pasta with porcini, mushrooms which are in season and plentiful at the moment. I followed with a plate of braised rabbit with olives and Martha had the braised pheasant. We also had a platter of garlicky cima di rapa (a slightly bitter local winter green). We drank the house wine and had a bottle of sparkling mineral water. I had coffee after.

The bill? €22 for both of us. Including tax and service.

The food was authentically cooked by a cook rather than a chef. The soccer game was playing in the kitchen. There were bones in my rabbit.

Afterwards, sitting back in my chair and filled with a sort of gustatory bliss I start thinking: What can Gordon Ramsey add to this? Besides cost I mean?

Come to northern Tuscany to get your classic Tuscan cuisine from a cook in a stained apron. You can save a bundle to spend on your health insurance, which you might need less of if you made a habit of eating healthy food unmodified and untortured by large corporations for profit.

Animals that roam. Bunnies that hop. Now there’s a concept.

Of course, the market suffered. Our favorite vegetable guy didn’t show up. Our own garden out back has given in to the frost, so it wasn’t unexpected that a vegetable guy wouldn’t have enough goods to bring to market.

But we were able to buy some cavolfiore, cauliflower, from a stall with rather slim pickings. I don’t know if I’ll oil ‘em up and roast them in a searing hot oven for 5 minutes or steam them, mash them just slightly with a fork, then saute them in hot olive oil with garlic and anchovy—my favorite and a lusty pasta sauce when you need one.

In any case, there are always silver linings to these bad weather clouds. A smaller turnout at the market meant that there were more zeppole at Bar Ricci. In fact, the Ricci was awash in zeppole. Zepole are a sort of fried doughnut filled with cream (in Ricci’s case) with cherries on top and a dusting of powdered sugar to mark you as a zeppole man (or at least your moustache).

Martha had a ciocolato caldo, hot chocolate, with her zeppole. But there was a choice to be made. She had to decide whether she wanted it lisce or piu solido more solid, “like we like it in Italy.” When Martha answered, “piu solido” Stefania beamed, “You’re really Italian! We have to make it weak with more milk for the British,” she confided.

How can someone pass up a steaming cup of properly made chocolate? In Italy, it’s darn near a drinkable pudding. A small espresso spoon should stand up in it. It’s rich and tasty. Water it down (well, milk it down)?

No, grazie.

First of all, the food in Provence is very, very, good. Not better than Tuscany, just differently good. That said, prices for it are astonishingly expensive here. I’ve been rejoicing when the price of the “formula” lunch, a main plate and a dessert or cheese, is €13 or so. But that doesn’t include wine or coffee. In the Lunigiana I get a pasta course, a meat course, vegetables, wine, bottled water and sometimes dessert for 10-13 Euros. A decent lunch for two in Provence seldom costs less then €50 when it’s all added up.

And if you’re looking at real estate the gap is even wider. There’s little in Provence for under €300,000. A country farmhouse will easily set you back €500,000. You can buy a decent place in the Lunigiana for €100,000 and there are some “monolocales” (one big room with corner kitchen) going for as low as €40,000. The rest of Tuscany (the part the tourists have discovered) is a little more expensive, but they can’t match what’s going on here. Locals blame Mayle.

Ok, so what’s “better” about France? The seemingly infinite number of cheeses for one. Sure, Piemonte lists about 160 different local cheese variations, but outside of the region that borders France you have to dig for interesting cheese variations (they exist, but production is so low that they aren’t found in many markets or supermarkets).

And I have to hand it to France for the open-air markets. In Italy the markets are big on clothing that comes from somewhere else and is cheap, from stalls increasingly manned by foreigners from Asia. This section of the market doesn’t mean much to me except when I’m running low on socks or I need some sexy underwear. There are lots of vegetables, but fewer butchers and specialty food items like olives cured and spiced in various ways, something Provence has a profusion of.

So those are a couple of quick observations. Two countries, two deservedly popular regions to explore. In either, if you rent a house or apartment and stay a week or two, you’ll find plenty to keep you busy, if not to keep you enchanted.

I am looking forward to returning to my big Tuscan kitchen though.

Maybe it’s the economy. Why else—besides drowning your economic sorrows—would you get all dolled up to go out to eat Ali di pipistrello?

That’d be bat wings. It’s an antipasto. Or at least it is at the Agriturismo Spino Fiorito tonight. The Spino is my favorite place to eat in the Lunigiana.

We were just there yesterday. We had the standard €10 lunch; a primo, secondo, dessert and coffee with a bottle of good wine and water of your choice. Fantastic stuff. You’d be hard pressed to find a better food value in Italy these days.

In any case, on our way out after paying, we saw the Halloween party menu.

Six antipasti, two choices of primi and two secondi. You can have dragon tail for a main course or la scrigno della strega which my dictionary insists is a jewel box belonging to a witch. Hard on the teeth methinks. Makes you hungry, doesn’t it?

If you want to go, call the Spino Fiorito at 0585-949167 pronto. They’re at loc. Padula Casola in Lunigiana. Here’s a review

(I’m suspecting that bat wings just might be some diabolical incarnation of quail wings. Honest. They sell packages of them at the Ipercoop. Cute little things. Not a whole lotta meat. Don’t you just love the word “pipistrello”?)

Or the promise of a warm morning:

(Click to see them a decent size)

The second picture was taken on our way to the Art Monastery in Calvi. Here’s a project I’m excited about. Artists take over an old monastery; turning part of it into a very inexpensive B&B and part into facilities in which they hold classes in art and create local performance art. Each shared room has a small kitchen, but there are also visiting chefs who can feed you. You can also learn skills relating to the land. These coming weeks are devoted to olive harvest weekends. Check them out. Fantastic group.