Food&Blogger: Giulia Scarpaleggia and Tommaso Galli of Juls’ Kitchen (part II)

2017-06-21 Juls’ Kitchen, the blog Giulia Scarpaleggia launched eight years ago and now runs with her partner Tommaso Galli, is not just any old food blog.
It’s a diary of their lives in Tuscany, a collection of stories and photos by the food writer and food photographer from Colle Val d’Elsa and authentic recipes inspired by traditional Italian cuisine and seasonal cooking. It’s Giulia’s favourite place to be, and she’s helped on her incredible adventures by Tommaso, who handles social communication, makes videos of her recipes and oversees the more technical aspects of the blog.
Giulia and Tommaso, what other activities does Juls’ Kitchen involve?
“We work with customers, companies and magazines on developing recipes and photographing food. We run food writing and food photography workshops in other cities (Turin, Milan and Venice), hold cookery courses for non-Italians both at Juls’ Kitchen Studio at our house in the hills near Siena, and at places like Eataly in Florence. We also run cookery courses in English for non-Italians at our studio and at holiday farmhouses around the Chianti area. Last but not least, Giulia writes cookery books. She’s written five so far.”
What are your books about, Giulia?
“My first cookery book, “Le ricette di mia nonna”, published in Italian and English by Mediagroup Adv in 2011, features the food we eat at home every day. In 2012 I wrote “I love Toscana” for Food Editore, which was translated into English, Dutch and Polish. It was followed in 2014 by “Cucina da chef con ingredienti low cost”, published by Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, and in 2015 by “Cucina naturale: frutta” from Gribaudo. My latest book, “La cucina dei mercati in Toscana”, was published by Guido Tommasi Editore in 2017.”
What inspired your latest book?
“Tommaso and I fell in love with Tuscan markets when we visited them with the people attending our cookery courses. We saw how everyone loved meeting the producers face-to-face. And we firmly believe in buying from small producers at local markets... The book is a tour around the best food markets in Tuscany, complete with our photographs; it introduces readers to 35 markets and 105 different recipes, all of them simple, traditional and typical .”
What’s been your greatest satisfaction so far?
“A month ago we published a survey on our blog to get to know our readers better and gather some feedback. We received so many emails! From Italians and non-Italians, people we don’t know and people who love reading the blog and getting inspiration from Giulia’s recipes and stories. It was incredibly satisfying: communicating with people lies at the heart of our blog after all.”
What’s the greatest difficulty you’ve encountered?
“Organising our time! We haven’t solved the problem yet, but we’re working on it… We both used to be employees, then we went freelance, and now we’ve become entrepreneurs since setting up our own company, but we find it hard to manage work deadlines. Distinguishing between work and home life is difficult, particularly because to us work means having fun….” (to be continued)

Mariagrazia Villa

Photography: © Juls’Kitchen