Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (32 page)

TYPICAL DISHES OF TUSCANY

Antipasti
Bruschetta: slices of toasted bread topped with chopped veal spleen, onion, anchovies, capers, and pepper, but also with chopped entrails (heart or lung, etc.), liver, chicken giblets, and razor clams. The topping may also consist solely of pieces of tomato or abundant olive oil and salt (
fettunta
, oiled bread).

First Courses
Panzanella
, an excellent summer dish: bread soaked in water and vinegar, seasoned with anchovies, tomato, onion, olives, and basil. The typical pastas of Tuscany are
bavettine
(Livorno) and
pappardelle
(Arezzo) and they are accompanied by thin slices of fish. But in general Tuscans find it more natural to make country-style soups as first dishes, such as
ribollita
and
pappa al pomodoro
(bread and tomato soup) and, of course, the Livornese
cacciucco
.

Second Courses
Florentine-style steak (
bistecca alla fiorentina
), of approximately half a kilo, cooked on the grill without seasoning or salt. Also typical is boiled meat with abundant black pepper; the character of this dish is obvious from the name itself:
peposo
, peppery. Florentine-style tripe is popular, cut into little strips and cooked with oil and aromatic herbs, tomatoes, and basil. Tripe is also prepared by cooking it with veal shank in an earthenware pan.

Among the most surprising meat dishes, the “tuna of Chianti” deserves description: it is made without tuna but with suckling pigs, victims of zootechnic selection, in June and July. During these hot months, in fact, pork is not eaten in the customary way because it is too heavy. Moreover, salting is also difficult in the heat of summer, since instead of being cured, the meat spoils. Therefore the suckling pig, instead of being salted, is boiled in wine production residues, the so-called
vin brusco
, or tart wine (from the first pressing of white grapes of the Trebbiano and Malvasia varieties). The cooked meat is then placed in oil. It is thought that at the end of this processing the suckling pig takes on the flavor of
fish. The Tuscans, who in ancient times did not have access to prized fish such as tuna, gladly found a substitute for it in their homemade surrogate. At one time “fake tuna” had almost fallen into disuse. Today the dish has been recovered by “cuisine archeologists” and can be sampled in the town of Panzano in Chianti.

Also typical of Tuscany are the
cee alla pisana
(Pisan-style baby eels), newborn eels caught in Pisa at night along the banks of the Arno: attracted by the light of fishing lamps, they are later fried with oil, garlic, and sage and served sprinkled with Parmesan. In coastal Tuscany Livornese-style mullet (with tomatoes and herbs) is common.

White beans in a flask (
nella fiasca
), also called “Purgatory beans,” are cooked in a glass flask from Chianti. After removing the woven straw covering from the flask, water and oil, in addition to the beans, are poured in; garlic, rosemary, and sage are added; and the bottle is buried in nearly extinguished coals (or suspended over the hearth for a number of hours). The dish can be viewed in the painting
Il mangiafagioli
(The bean eater) by Annibale Carracci (1560–1609), on display at the Galleria Colonna in Rome.

A typical Tuscan preserve for the winter is arbutus jam.

 

TYPICAL PRODUCTS OF TUSCANY

Sheep's cheeses: Tuscan pecorino and Tuscan Caciotta. The rinds of these cheeses appear to be tinted with the colors found in medieval Tuscan frescoes. Such coloring is obtained by lining the inside of the mold with a layer of tomato (which makes the cheese orange on the outside), walnut leaves (which make it brown), or charcoal (producing a black rind).

Biroldo
from Garfagnana (a mountainous region in Tuscany), a spicy salami made with pig's head and entrails;
buristo
blood sausage; fennel salami. The renowned Colonnata lard, which truly has to do with columns,
being a secondary result (and this is the paradox) of the extraction of Carrara marble from caves bearing the name Colonnata. The secret of this lard (salt pork) lies in the type of salting. The fatty parts of the pig, sprinkled with top-quality sea salt, are placed in marble tubs rubbed with garlic and herbs. And these tubs are none other than the hollows left after cutting the blocks of Colonnata marble. A first layer of lard is placed on the bottom of the basin, then a layer of sea salt, coarsely crushed black pepper, fresh garlic, rosemary, and sage, and then additional layers of lard are added. Once it is filled, the tub is sealed with a slab of marble and left intact for six months or more.

The marble of the caves of Colonnata is ideal for aging the lard because it is particularly porous. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this lard, today earmarked for gourmets, was considered the food of anarchists. According to the political literature and newspapers of that time, workers in the marble caves were distinguishable by their libertarian bent. It was among them that the cadres of the revolutionary movements were formed. Visitors to the caves still today are ceremoniously shown the ancient spikes and spatulas created to skewer and turn the lard couched in the cavity.

In Orbetello the tradition of smoking fish, a practice brought there in the sixteenth century by the Spaniards, is preserved. Not unexpectedly, it was in Orbetello, at the time of ancient Rome, that the fish sauce
garum
was prepared, an essential ingredient of Roman cuisine. Nowadays here eels from the lagoon, both marinated and smoked, and gray mullet
bottarga
(salted and dessicated roe) are jarred in this sauce.

Marrons from Mugello, chestnuts from Amiata. A typical Tuscan product for export is chestnut flour: the flour used in the focaccias of Garfagnana. Also famous is the spelt from Garfagnana, which comes from the same areas of northern Tuscany.

Tuscan bread is an excellent typical product; it is impossible to list all the varieties. We will mention the
pane pazzo
(crazy bread) with pepper;
the bread of Radicofani with honey, pepper, and raisins (a true
panpepato
); All Saints' bread with almonds and walnuts; and December bread with pumpkin. There is braided Lenten bread, the
carsenta
of Lunigiana, a large leavened bread that is baked wrapped in chestnut leaves, and represents a ritual element of the Good Friday meal. The yellow bread of Arezzo, by contrast, is served at the Easter Sunday table. And the bread of Sant'Antonio, patron saint of pigs, cattle, and cattle breeders, is made on January 17, the saint's feast day.
Ciaccia
, a bread made from maize flour, a specialty of the Maremma, has always been considered a poor man's food.
Donzelle
(round loaves), or
ficattole
or
sgabbei
, are fried in olive oil in a deep pan.
Fiandalone
is the bread of the woodcutters and charcoal makers of Monte Amiata. Added to it are chestnut flour and rosemary sprigs. Bread seasoned with rosemary is also called
di ramerino
(with sprigs). Strangely enough, there is no rosemary in it, though a certain quantity of rosemary oil is added to the dough.
Pan marocco
contains pine nuts, while the
marocca
of Casola is made with chestnut flour and mashed potato. There is herb bread with chamomile, wild mint, and red pepper added.
Panigaccio
, produced in Lunigiana, is baked on an earthenware slab (
testo
) and sprinkled with grated Parmesan. The Lucca variety,
buccellato
, is sweet and also includes sultanas and aniseed.
Castagnaccio
is made with chestnut flour, which is ground prevalently in Garfagnana, along with raisins, rosemary, and pine nuts.
Schiacciata
is made with pork cracklings, potatoes, herbs, and even tomatoes. The soft
ricciarelli
of Siena are almond cookies exported from Tuscany to all parts of the world.

Principal vegetable products: the purple and red onion of Certaldo, once praised by Boccaccio in the
Decameron
:

 

Certaldo, as perchance you may have heard, is a town of Val d'Elsa within our country-side, which, small though it is, had in it aforetime people of rank and wealth. Thither, for that there he found good pasture, 'twas long the wont of one of the Friars of St. Antony to resort once every year, to collect
the alms that fools gave them. Fra Cipolla—so hight the friar—met with a hearty welcome, no less, perchance, by reason of his name than for other cause, the onions produced in that district being famous throughout Tuscany.
¹⁸

 

Cannellini beans from Sorano, and also the
zolfino
bean that grows in the mountain zones.

From Tuscany, travelers also bring back dried figs, tied in pairs and alternating with aniseed.

 

TYPICAL BEVERAGES

The legendary red wines Chianti and Brunello di Montalcino.