Typical recipes from Tuscany, a land rich in flavours

Tuscany can truly be called the richest land of flavours. It ranges from the products of its mountains, mushrooms and chestnuts, to the crops of its plains, which are manifold, to the meat farms, to the prized fish of its sea.

Of some of the world's best known recipes, I have already written in the articles on the specialities of Florence and Pistoia, so if you are looking for ribollita, the famous Florentine steak, or panzanella (of which there is a whole article with its variants) or even lampredotto and other Florentine specialities, you will find them in the other articles. Here we will now put typical recipes from other Tuscan cities.

• Livorno with its cacciucco
• Prato with its cantucci with almonds
• Arezzo with its SCOTTIGLIA
• Siena with its panforte and pappa al pomodoro, and many others.

Let's not forget the bread, which is an excellence of Tuscan cuisine, the bread without salt or sciapo.

Let's start with the hors d'oeuvres, which in Tuscany are usually platters of sliced cold meats, cheeses and crostini. The king of crostini is black crostini with livers and crostini with fresh tomatoes and basil. One of the most famous crostini cooked in Tuscany is Colonnata lard, which is thinly sliced and placed on toasted bread croutons while still hot.

Let us now move on to first courses with the speciality of Siena, pappa al pomodoro

Pappa al pomodoro

Needed for the pappa al pomodoro

grams 400 of stale Tuscan bread

• 800 grams of ripe tomatoes
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 8 basil leaves
• 1.5 litres vegetable broth or water
• olive oil, salt, pepper, chilli pepper, grated cheese as needed

Preparation of the pappa al pomodoro

First prepare the bread. It should be cut into slices and toasted for a few minutes in the oven. When removed from the oven, rub the bread with garlic.

In a crock pot with a little oil, fry the remaining garlic, add the ripe tomatoes, skinned and seeded and cut into pieces, and finally the toasted bread.

Now add the vegetable stock or water and cook with the lid on until the liquid is almost completely consumed. In the meantime, stir the bread with the tomato every now and then with a whisk so that the bread is reduced to a paste. When cooked, adjust the salt and pepper, season with chopped basil, chilli powder and plenty of grated cheese. Serve either hot or cold.

MALFATTI

Needed for the MALFATTI

• grams 600 of already cooked and squeezed spinach
• 2 eggs
• grams 600 of fresh ricotta
• flour, salt, pepper, grated cheese, olive oil and nutmeg as needed

Preparation of the MALFATTI

First cook the spinach in a pan with a little oil for a few minutes. As soon as it has cooled, chop it very finely. In a bowl put the chopped spinach, the ricotta cheese and mix the two ingredients well. Now add the 2 beaten eggs and incorporate them into the ricotta and spinach.

Adjust the salt and pepper and a pinch of nutmeg. Form small balls with the flour and spinach mixture, making sure that the flour adheres very well on all sides. This is to prevent the MALFATTI from opening during cooking. While waiting to bake them, place them in a baking tin, spaced out from each other. As soon as they are all ready, cook them in plenty of salted water for a few minutes. Dress them with butter and sage and grated cheese.

Pappardelle with wild boar sauce

Ingredients for preparing pappardelle with wild boar sauce

• grams 400 of egg pappardelle
• 500 grams of minced wild boar meat
• a glass of red wine
• grams 400 of tomato puree
• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 1 celery rib
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• a few bay leaves
• salt, pepper and olive oil to taste.

Preparation of pappardelle with wild boar sauce

In a rather large saucepan, sauté the finely chopped carrot, onion and celery in a little olive oil. Also add a couple of bay leaves and some chopped rosemary leaves.

Now add the red wine and let it evaporate. Add the tomato puree and with the lid on, cook for about 2 hours on a very low heat. When cooked, adjust the salt and pepper and the wild boar ragout is ready.

Cook the pappardelle al dente in plenty of salted water and season with the wild boar meat sauce. Sprinkle with plenty of grated Parmesan cheese and serve hot.

Let's now move on to the main courses with the typical Livorno recipe, cacciucco alla livornese.

Cacciucco alla Livornese

Needed for cacciucco alla livornese

• 2 kilograms of mixed fish (octopus, squid, cuttlefish, redfish, red mullet, eel, gurnard) and whatever you can find fresh
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 800 g peeled chopped tomatoes
• 8 slices of stale home-made bread
• a few sage leaves
• grams 40 of olive oil
• chilli pepper, salt and pepper to taste

Preparation of cacciucco alla livornese

In a large earthenware pan fry 1 clove of chopped garlic in olive oil, add the chopped sage leaves and the tomato pulp. Add 2 cups of hot water and after adjusting the salt, pepper and chilli pepper, cook the sauce very slowly for about an hour, adding a little water if it tends to dry out too much.

Now place the cleaned and cut fish in the pan and with the lid on, leave to simmer for about 2 hours. When cooked, serve piping hot on slices of toasted bread. The bread is rubbed with garlic and a little olive oil.

The rotsticciana

La rosticciana, that's what pork cutlets cooked on the grill are called in Tuscany. A very tasty and appropriate dish for a dinner with friends.

The ingredients are just, the rosticciana, which is cooked in one whole piece, dividing the cutlets only once cooked, salt pepper and a nice grill.

The rosticciana before placing it on the grill is sprinkled with salt and pepper on both sides, massaging the meat with the hands to make it stick better.

Once cooked, they are eaten immediately hot. Obviously, in a self-respecting barbecue in Tuscany there are not only pork cutlets, but also pork and veal steaks, sausages and meat skewers of both pork and veal or chicken. Consider that cutlets are the ones that need the longest cooking time, on average 40 minutes, so it is the first meat to be put on the grill.

The SCOTTIGLIA

The SCOTTIGLIA is a mixture of various meats, i.e. chicken, veal, pork, pigeon, rabbit, turkey, etc.

What you need for the SCOTTIGLIA

• 800 grams of chopped mixed meat
• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 1 celery rib
• 1 glass of red wine
• 1 clove of garlic
• 600 g peeled chopped tomatoes
• 1 cup of meat stock
• 1 bunch of parsley
• 3 basil leaves
• 8 slices of toasted stale bread
• olive oil, chilli powder, salt, pepper to taste

Preparation of the SCOTTIGLIA

Chop the carrot, onion, celery and clove of garlic very finely. In a pan, possibly earthenware with a little olive oil, sauté the herbs. As soon as they are golden brown, put the meat in pieces and brown it briefly on all sides.

Now add the red wine and let it evaporate completely. Now add the peeled chopped tomatoes and cook with the lid on for about an hour, adding a little meat stock if the sauce tends to dry out too much. Now toast the bread slices and put two slices on each plate. Pour the hot SCOTTIGLIA onto the plates and after two or three minutes serve. This time to allow the meat to soak into the bread well.

We now move on to the desserts.

Cantucci di Prato

Ingredients for the cantucci di Prato

• 300 grams of flour
• 1 teaspoon of ammonia for sweets
• grams 160 of sugar
• grams 140 of almonds
• 2 eggs
• the grated peel of a lemon
• the grated peel of an orange
• a pinch of salt

Preparation of Prato cantucci

Mix the eggs with the sugar, then add the orange and lemon peel. Continue by slowly incorporating the flour and cake ammonia and work with your hands to obtain a homogeneous dough.

Now put the whole almonds into the dough and knead again to mix everything well. Divide the dough into two parts and shape it into a loaf. Place the loaves in a baking tray and bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and cut the loaves into slices up to one and a half centimetres thick.

Try to cut the slices diagonally. Return the biscuits to the oven at 150 degrees for another 20 minutes, turning them halfway through baking. Leave to cool. They keep for several days and are also delicious cold, dipped, as Tuscan tradition dictates, in vinsanto.

Panforte di Siena

A typical Christmas cake, together with ricciarelli also originating in Siena.

Ingredients for the panforte di Siena

• grams 150 of flour
• grams 350 chopped candied fruit
• grams 350 sugar
• grams 120 of honey
• 400 grams of unpeeled almonds
• 50 grams of chopped orange peel
• 7 grams of powdered cinnamon
• 3 cloves
• a pinch of nutmeg
• 5 grams of pepper
• grams 40 of wafers

Preparation of the panforte di Siena

Dissolve the sugar in a little water, as soon as it has dissolved remove from the heat and add the candied fruit and orange peel, stir and place back on the heat to bring it to the boil, as soon as it comes to the boil remove from the heat.

Now add the other ingredients, i.e. the flour, honey, almonds and spices until a smooth and firm dough is obtained. Now form a sheet no more than one and a half centimetres high. If it is too large, divide it in two and prepare two buns. Place this pastry in a cake tin lined with baking paper and lined with wafers and bake at 170 degrees for about 25 minutes. As soon as it is cooked, dust the surface with icing sugar.

Ricciarelli

Needed for the ricciarelli

• grams 40 of flour
• grams 250 sugar
• grams 350 of almonds
• grams 15 of vanilla sugar
• 20 grams of chopped candied orange
• one egg white whipped to stiff peaks

for the syrup

• grams 40 of icing sugar and enough water

for the mixture

• grams 40 of flour
• grams 20 of sugar
• grams 40 of vanilla sugar
• wafers (optional)
• icing sugar

Preparation of the ricciarelli di Siena

Finely chop the almonds and add them to the sugar, orange zest and a little flour.

Separately, dissolve the sugar in a little water to turn it into a syrup. Heat the almond paste in a bowl, add the sugar syrup and flour. Now cover the bowl with a cloth and let the mixture rest for at least 12 hours.

After this time has elapsed, take the dough and pour in the beaten egg whites and vanilla sugar. Form the dough into a ball and roll it out with a rolling pin to a thickness of about 1 centimetre. At this point, a metal mould of that shape is needed to shape the ricciarello.

Use this mould to make many ricciarelli, which are placed on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Sprinkle with icing sugar and place in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for about 15 minutes. Serve cold.