Tuscan cooking

Tuscan Cooking has often been described as the best "cucina povera" (poor) in the whole of Italy, povera in this context meaning lacking elaboration and based totally on the quality of the ingredients. Although the city-states of Tuscany were torn apart by fierce and bitter clashes all through the Middle Ages, they remained unified in their cooking. The elements and ingredients are the same throughout the region, even though in the north they have a certain affinity with the cooking, of Ligura and Emilia-Romagna, and in the south with that of Rome. One of the main elements common to all Tuscan cooking, apart from its simplicity and the excellence of the primary ingridients, is the wide use of herbs. Thyme, sage, rosemary, and tarragon, the last seldom found elsewhere, are added to soups, meat, and fish. Spices are common in Tuscan cooking, fennel seeds and chili being popular. Chili is called "zenzero" in Tuscany, a word that elsewhere in Italy means ginger.

The Tuscan olive oil is what makes the region's food so unmistakably Tuscan. Rather than a dressing, it is the main character in the gastronomic scenario of the Tuscan table. Food is sauteed and fried in it, soups are benedette by it ( given a last minute benediction by spooning some oil into them), and every vegetable is made tastier with a couple of tablespoons of it. Olive oil is also used in the preparation of dolci, as in castagnaccio and all types of fritters, in which the local cooking is particularly rich.

A traditional Tuscan meal should start with a soup.Thick and nourishing, full of vegetables, beans, herbs, and olive oil, it will be ladled over the pan sciocco (unsulted bread). The Ribollita

of Siena and Florence rival in variety the acquacotta of the Maremma, made with local vegetables and seasoned with the creativity of the cook. Traditionally pasta is not a Tuscan forte, although nowadays you can eat a good dish of pasta in most restaurants. There are, however, two pasta dishes that are Tuscan through: Pappardelle con la lepre and Pici.

Meat, chcken, and pig are all superb roasted on the spit or barbecued, they are eaten as they are, no sauces and no trimmings. All kinds of game are popular, from roebucks and boars to thrushes and skylarks, not only for their gastronomic value but also because of the Tuscan passion for shooting almost anything that moves. Pork meat is cured to maked the famous "Sopressata" of Siena, the biroldo of Pistoia, sausages with chili, fennel-flavored finocchiona, and all the prosciutti. The prosciutti from Tuscany, sometimes smoked are much smaller and leaner than the more famous one from Parma, but they have a stronger taste. Salumi made from wild boar are also a local specialty.

The other great love is the bean. Not for nothing have the Tuscan's been nicknamed mangia fagiioli( bean eaters). They invented the best way to cook fagioli namely in a flask, to retain the taste of the white cannellini. The modern equivalent of that method is to stew the beans in a cone-shaped earth ware pot.

Beans are served as accompaniment to pork, as "arista" or with broiled chops and fegatelli (broiled liver wrapped in caul fat). Along the Tuscan coast the most traditional dishes are based on fish. The cacciucco, a soup, and triglie (red mullet) alla livornese are the best-known dishes from the northern stretch of coast, while farther south the catch is mullet, which is usually broiled, as well as cuttlefish, flying squid, and octopus. Another specialty found only in the Tuscan are the cieche or ce' e (tyny baby eels) caught at the mouth of the Arno near Pisa. They are thrown alive into hot olive oil flavored with sage and garlic.

Tuscany offers the best pecorini, made from ewe milk, of which the ones from the Crete Senesi and from Pienza are the most highly prized. Also famous is the marzolino, del Chianti, which Caterina de' Medici loved so much she had it sent regularly to France. The usual, and the best, way to end a meal is with pecorino, which, in April, is accompanied by young raw fava beans.