I tend to find that cuisine in Tuscany mainly consists of heavy and hearty rustic home cooking. It’s all about simple food prepared to taste great. You’ll find fresh vegetables, superb olive oils, grilled meats, unleavened bread, and all the cured ham, salami, and sausage you’ll care to eat. Finding a place to eat is not difficult because there are a slew of restaurants, sandwich shops, and wine bars in every town. Add tourism to the mix and the places to dine multiply. Culling out the best from the just “ok” takes some research. Here are a few of my favorite dishes.
Antipasti
Tuscan Bread is made without salt. This tradition continues from the days when salt was very expensive and poor Tuscan farmers could not afford to use salt on bread.
Tuscan bread drenched in olive oil and sprinkled with salt is a common antipasti.
Bruschetta- toasted Tuscan bread brushed with olive oil and garlic and topped with tomatoes or mushrooms or whatever fresh vegetable is available that day.
Crostini – Smaller pieces of Tuscan bread, toasted and topped with various pâtés. Crostini alla fiorentina is topped with chicken liver pâté.
Dried meat and cold cuts – Try a selection of mixed salami, prosciutto, pancetta, or finocchiona. Add a few pieces of local cheese, such as pecorino, and you’ve got a wonderful start to any meal. By the way, you’ll not find a true Tuscan sitting around drinking red wine with nothing to eat. Any of the above cold cuts or cheeses make a perfect match for a good glass of red wine from Tuscany.
Salami – Salt-cured and air-dried cold cut sausages
Prosciutto – prized salt-cured leg of a pig
Pancetta– salt-cured pork belly, kind of like our rustic bacon
Finocchiona – salami with fennel
Lardo– pure cured pork fat
Primi piatti
Hearty pasta dishes with meat sauce usually make up the traditional first plates. There are hundreds of pasta types, but some of my favorites are:
Pappardelle- wide flat pasta usually served with wild rabbit (lepre) or wild boar (cinghiale) sauce.
Ravioli – stuffed with local cheeses and served with meat sauce, black or white truffles (tartufi) or a simple butter sauce.
In the winter you will often find ribollita, a soup made from whatever’s left over in the kitchen and “re-boiled” with day-old Tuscan bread slices.
Secondi piatti
Bistecca alla Fiorentina – a T-bone steak grilled over an open fire and cooked very rare. After cooking it is seasoned with a little olive oil and salt. Typically the meat comes from the pure white Chianina cattle grazing in the fields of Tuscany.
You’ll also find various types of wild game: wild boar, rabbit, pheasants, and such. Often these are included in an assortment of grilled meats done up on a skewer.
Dolci
Cantucci is often served with a small glass of Vin Santo. You might know cantucci as biscotti, a twice-baked crunchy almond cookie. Vin Santo is a sweet almond/raisin wine.
Here are some food highlights from my recent trip to Tuscany.
vegetable lasagna
SIENA- Compagnia dei Vinattieri – I found this place several years ago, but it was only today I happen to walk in and find a table available. I had vegetable lasagna—about eight layers of tender homemade (not dried) pasta noodles, and zucchini roasted just until “al dente.” This simple dish was smothered in tomato sauce and loaded with flavor. Grated pecorino cheese finished it off just perfectly. At €7, it was a bargain!
Bistecca alla fiorentina
VOLTERRA – Ristorante DelDuca is owned by the husband and wife team of Genuino and Ivana Del Duca. I have dined here for many years. Tonight our waiter, Marco, suggested that the T-Bone was just the right size for three people and we took him up on it! Seven minutes per side over a wood fire.
Served basically rare (that’s the only way they will cook it) the sirloin is chewy and full of flavor. The filet melts in your mouth! Bistecca alla fiorentina goes perfectly with fagioli (white beans) and Genuino’s award-winning Giusto alle Balze wine!
We were stuffed but had to have desert. A selection of sorbets and a chocolate-orange cake. Yummy.
dolci
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