A culinary snapshot of Tuscany, as told through the eyes of Australian food authors Stephanie Alexander and Maggie Beer, is coming to the big screen, with Arcadia optioning the pair’s Tuscan Cookbook.
This year marks 25th anniversary of Alexander and Beer’s journey to the Italian region to run a cooking school in a villa outside of Siena.
Published by Penguin, the Tuscan Cookbook details the dishes cooked, the places visited, the people who made it all happen, and the guests who joined for the ride.
A feature adaptation is now in development, with Lisa Shaunessy producing for Arcadia and Alexandra Burke on board as executive producer. Katherine Thomson, whose credits include Amazon’s A Place To Call Home and feature documentary Women He’s Undressed, is writing the screenplay.
Arcadia has also taken the option to Stephanie’s Journal, in which Alexander invites the reader on an intimate journey through the various events of 1997, including the opening of the Richmond Hill Cafe & Larder, the closure of the celebrated restaurant, Stephanie’s, as well as the impact of The Cook’s Companion, published a year earlier, and the cooking schools in Tuscany with Beer.
She described the prospect of a Tuscan Cookbook feature film as “astonishing”.
“It was the adventure of our lives,” she said.
“It deepened our friendship as we supported each other and convinced us all over again of the value of being with others who shared our enthusiasm for ripe and real flavours, in a country that daily reinforced the importance of eating well as an essential part of living well.
“There are some great untold stories to be told.”
For Beer, the friendship and support the pair shared on the trip was both “incredibly special and life-affirming”.
“There are times of your life that are so wonderfully significant that you have to pinch yourself that it were even possible,” he said.
“I can’t believe it’s 25 years since our sojourn in Tuscany, when Stephanie and I embarked on this adventure.
“It gave us so much; that deep love of Italy and the confirmation of everything we had both always believed, taken to another level of seasonality where produce at the markets was perfectly ripe in that if it was local, it was more expensive as it was more perfect.”
Burke said the “timing felt right” to adapt the title.
“There is a wonderful story of friendship and adventure within the pages of the Tuscan Cookbook,” she said.
“It also struck me just how relevant their ideas on modern food production and preparation, indigenous rights, multiculturalism, and gender equality are today. As beloved icons, Maggie Beer and Stephanie Alexander have made significant impacts and contributions to Australian life, in a similar way Julia Child revolutionised the home kitchen in America. And this story, set in a particularly transformative moment in their lives, will inspire and entertain audiences here in Australia and around the world.”
Thomson said she felt fortunate to expand the narrative to a movie.
“The Tuscan Cookbook and Stephanie’s Journal are both incredibly rich source materials but there’s no beating the yarns I’ve been privileged to have and will continue to have as together we dive back to their 1997 selves,” she said.