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Specialities of Tuscany Cuisine
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Back to food notes
directory Specialities of Tuscany Cuisine
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A vacation in
Tuscany usually starts by enjoying its gorgeous landscape and certainly
finishes eating at a table. A great love for good food is the 'DNA character'
of the local people also because there is such a wide range of typical
dishes to choose from. The basic ingredients besides good olive oil are
other products of the earth such as cabbage, beans and other vegetables
which along with bread make up ribollita, delicious if seasoned
with chopped onion. Hardened bread is also the main ingredient to prepare
pappa col pomodoro which also requires tomatoes (typical ribbed
kind) and herbs. Bread is again the basic ingredient of panzanella (see
recipe), a fine substitute for pasta in summer. Dark cabbage soup, instead,
is more suitable as a winter first course. |
TRADITIONAL Panzanella It's a classic first course of Tuscany tradition. Nowadays is mostly served as antipasto or salad. It is fit for improvisation as long as you have good stale bread and fresh vegetables.
Break the stale bread in big pieces and put it in fresh water for few minutes. Then squeeze it and crumble it. Chop up onions, tomatoes, peeled cucumber and basil. Add to the bread and dress with abundant olive oil, salt and pepper. Put in the fridge. Add vinegar just before serving. Crostini traditional antipasto.
Preparation: finely chop up the onion with the garlic, the carot, the celery, the persil and the capers. Cover the bottom of a saucepan with olive oil e put the chopped herbs to brown on a small flame. When the onion starts to brown, add some of the broth and let it evaporate. Wash and dry the chiken livers then put them to cook with the herbs together with the minced beef and the sausage, for some minutes, then add the rest of the broth. Let everything cook for 15 minutes then add the chopped up anchovie and cook slowly other five minutes. When it's done, beat everything and spread it warm on the slightly toasted bread slices. Pappa al Pomodoro Bread and Tomato Soup. (serves 4 - 6) This is an extremely thick soup. You can add more water to make the dish soupier if you like.
Place 1/2 cup of the olive oil, the leek, onion, and garlic in a large pot and heat over medium. When the mixture starts to color, after 6 to 7 minutes, add the wine, and let it reduce completely, about 5 minutes. Reduce the beat to low and capp 1/4 cup of the basil, the tomatoes, and the water. Cook for 15 minutes. Add the bread, and stir occasionally for 20 minutes. Add salt and pepper, and cook for another 10 minutes. Then add the remaining 1/4 cup of basil, and cook for a final 10 minutes. The soup is ready. It will be very thick. Pour it into indiidual bowls and top each srving with a tablespoon of the remaining olive oil and 2 tablespoons of the cheese. Bruschetta traditional snack
Toast or barbecue the slices
of bread, rub garlic over them. Chop up tomatoes, mix with oregano, salt
and olive oil in a bowl. Spread on toasted bread. Pour some extra oil
on top and grind some peppe rto taste. Top with basil leaves. |
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ETRUSCAN Lepre
all'etrusca Hare with herbs Etruscan style. To soften the taste of wild, leave the hare meat deeped in 1/2 of water and 1/2 of vinegar with salt and several leaves of lauril for one night.
1) Pour enough olive
oil in a casserole dish to cover the bottom well Cinghiale
all'etrusca The wild boar was the
favorite meat in the Etruscan cuisine. Most of the territory was covered
by woods where the boars were numerous and the Etruscans hunted them
with the help of ferocious dogs- probably Assyrian mastiffs.
Rinse the meat in water and vinegar, cut it in little pieces. Chop up the vegetables. Put everything in a pan with olive oil and cook slowly (about 40 minutes) adding red wine when needed. Add tomatoes, mustard, salt to taste and a drop of vinegar and cook 20 minutes more. |
RENAISSANCE Faraona alla prugna
Open the guinea-fowl
like a book (or butterfly) Insalata Reale
Don't wash the porcini as they fall apart,
clean them with a damp cloth and slice thinly onto a plate (or how you
like) so that the two colours are exposed
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MYTHS Cacciucco
is a very famous dish original of Livorno, now a big town on the Tuscan
Sea. Etymologically speaking the name Cacciucco comes from the Turkish
"Kuçuk" that means bits and pieces. Caciucco
has a simple foundamental rule : use a variety of "pour fish", some of
them with fish bones.
Livorno's fishermen, as generally all fishermen, used to go fishing in
the night and they were coming back early in the morning . Each variety
of fished was exposed on the benches of the port and was sold directly
to the consumers . The less valuable kinds of fishes that people didn't
buy, were rinsed in the sea water and taken home by the fisherman to prepare
the soup for his family. Zuppa di "pesce dimenticato" 2 kg of fish, chosen among the "forgotten" varieties of a Mediterranean fisherman net 300 gr potatoes peeled tomatoes, garlic, basel, cellery, carot, onion, asparagus, cauliflower, swiss chard, sage, zucchini, red pepper, olive oil, white wine, red wine, salt. Gut all the fish. Make the broth: fry garlic, carot, cellery, onion. Add half a glass of white wine and let it evaporate. Put the heads and bones of fish, fill the pan with water and simmer. Mix the vegetables in a mixer. Put garlic and fish in hot oil to white the fish, then add one glass of red wine and let it evaporate. Fill up half of the saucepan with the filtered broth. Take it to boil and add the mixed vegetables, red pepper and salt. Boil on low flame for 2 hours, adding broth when necessary, to obtain a slithly thick soup. Serve with a trickle of extravergine olive oil. |
Cacciucco alla livornese by fisherman Ignazio
Make the broth: boile the gurnard with carots, sellery onion and salt, then pass it in a vegetable mill. In a big casserole brown in oil plenty of garlic, parsley and hot pepper. Add octopus, cuttlefish, tattlers and clams and cook for 20 minutes (adding the fish broth when necessary Add some tomatoes and srimps, mussels, prawns, cook for other10 minutes. Serve with bread slices. Cacciucco alla viareggina by chef Amelio Fantoni Time: 30 minuts
First gut the fish and cut it in pieces. Cook everything in a little of water with garlic, tomatoe paste, red pepper and salt. Not more then 30 minutes. Serve over toasted slices of bread (Tuscan bread, baked with no salt at woodfire) with a generous trickle of olive oil. Baccalà alla livornese Ingredients: 1 kg baccalà oil parsley garlic tomatoes flour salt and pepper "Baccalà" is codfish preserved in salt. It must be kept in water for at least 12 hours, changing the water several times, before cooking it. Cut it in medium size pieces, dry them with paper, roll them in flour, fry in plenty of oil. Make the sauce: brown minced garlic and parsley for a minute in a pan, add tomatoes salt and pepper. Now put the fried baccalà in a casserole, cover it with the sauce, put in oven at 180° C for 40 minutes. |
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Penne Primavera with Saffron Spring first course of pasta with vegetables in season (for 4 persons) - time: 35 minutes
Wither the sliced leeks in a pan with olive oil, add the zucchini cutted in cubes and cook for 12-15 minutes, then add the mascarpone and the saffron melted in hot milk. In the meantime cook the pasta in plenty of salted water. Strain the pasta, add the vegetable sauce, sprinkle some grated parmigiano and serve at once. |
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