This is a transcript of the podcast appearing on our Podcast page.

Italian cuisine is a favorite the world over. It's delicious, healthy and brimming with variety. One reason is the Italian insistence on using only fresh, local ingredients. Each region of Italy has its own specialties, and within each region are microclimates, lifestyles and traditions that combine to create unique flavors and unforgettable meals.

For all of Italy's culinary variety, some ingredients are found throughout the country, but with their own local flair. One of these ingredients is olive oil. The queen of oils, benefiting the heart, skin, palate and mood, olive oil is as Italian as Michelangelo.

Every year, the renowned Italian cooking school called The Awaiting Table offers a special course celebrating the Puglia region's contribution to Italy's olive oil masterpiece. The course is entitled: "The Contadino, the Cook and the Extra Virgin" and will take place from June 22-28, 2008, about 20 minutes south of the city of Lecce.

Silvestro Silvestori is the proud owner of the Awaiting Table, voted one of Italy's finest cooking schools by Food and Wine magazine. Designed for English and Italian speakers, Silvestro will lead you in the preparation and appreciation of regional specialties, such as orchecciette salentine, local seafood and the layered casseroles unique to the area. Then there's the bread, the pastries, cheeses, wine, making sausages from scratch and eating them on the beach...this is is a truly a 'hands on' experience.

Silvestro will also lead excursions to nearby Lecce, known as the Florence of tha South, where you'll find specialty shops and food markets that will set your culinary imagination free.

The Awaiting Table will team up with a company called Olive Matters, which specializes in all aspects of premium olive oil production. Olive Matters will provide instruction in the cultivation, appreciation and tasting of the best olive oil in the region. You'll tour local olive oil production groves, both traditional and modern, and meet the growers, millers, bottlers and retailers who make premium olive oil their life's work. You'll visit the shops, mills and fields, tasting this year's olive oil long before it's imported to your home country.

You'll also learn the difference between the olive oil that goes from the Italian grove to the Italian table and the olive oil we find in supermarkets where we live. Italians definitely have the advantage here, consuming their olive oil unadulterated, unblended and undiluted. By meeting the local producers, you will have the opportunity to purchase olive oil directly from the groves.

This wonderful cooking course will be based in the castle of the beautiful Palazzo Bacile. The demonstrations, cooking and your accommodations will all take place in this palazzo dating back to the 16th century. Complete with olive groves, a swimming pool, vaulted ceilings and an immense drawing room that opens onto terraces overlooking the courtyard, Palazzo Bacile is the perfect place to relax, unwind and absorb the culinary culture of Puglia.

To learn more, go to www.awaitingtable.com or contact me at my website, essenceofitaly.net.