Tuscany can be called the most flavour-rich land. It ranges from the products of its mountains, mushrooms and chestnuts, to the cultivation of its plains, which are many, to the meat farms, to the valuable fish of its sea. Of some recipes, among the best known in the world, I have already written in the articles on the specialties of Florence and Pistoia, so if you are looking for the ribollita, the famous Florentine steak, or on the panzanella (of which there is a whole article with its variants) or lamprey and other Florentine specialties, found in other items. Here we will now put the typical recipes of other cities of Tuscany.
Livorno with his cacciucco
Meadow with its cantucci with almonds
Arezzo with SCOTTIGLIA
Siena with her panforte and tomato gruel, and many more.
Let’s not forget bread, which is an excellence of Tuscan cuisine, bread without salt or slob.
Let’s start with appetizers that in Tuscany are normally cuttings of sliced meats, cheeses and croutons. The king of croutons is the black one with livers and croutons with fresh tomatoes and basil. One of the most famous croutons cooked in Tuscany is the one that concerns the lard of Colonnata, which is cut into thin slices and put on toasted bread croutons still warm.
Let’s now move on to the first dishes with the specialty of Siena, the tomato gruel
Tomato jelly
Necessary for tomato gruel
400 grams of stale Tuscan bread
- 800 grams of ripe tomatoes
- 4 cloves garlic
- 8 basil leaves
- 1.5 litres of vegetable stock or water
- olive oil, salt, pepper, chilli, grated cheese as much as you need
Preparation of tomato gruel
First prepare the bread. Cut into slices and put to toast for a few minutes in the oven. Remove from the oven, rub the bread with garlic.
In a clay pan with a little oil, fry the remaining garlic, combine the ripe tomatoes deprived of the skin and seeds and cut into pieces and finally the bread toasted.
At this point add the vegetable stock or water and cook with the lid until the liquid is almost completely consumed. Meanwhile, every now and then with a whisk turn the bread with the tomato so that the bread is reduced to a gruel. At the end of cooking, season with the chopped basil, chilli powder and plenty of grated cheese. It serves both hot and cold.
MALFACTS
Necessary for MALFACTS
- 600 grams of spinach already cooked and squeezed
- 2 eggs
- 600 grams of fresh ricotta
- flour, salt, pepper, grated cheese, olive oil and nutmeg as much as you need
Preparation of MALFACTS
First, cook the spinach in a frying pan for a few minutes. Just cold chop them very finely. In a bowl put the chopped spinach, ricotta and mix the two ingredients well. Now add the 2 beaten eggs and incorporate them into the ricotta and spinach. Season with salt and pepper and a pinch of nutmeg. With the flour and the spinach mixture form balls, making sure that the flour adheres very well from all sides. This is to prevent MALFACTS from opening during cooking. Waiting to cook them put them in a baking pan spaced apart from each other. Just ready all, cook them in plenty of salted water for a few minutes. Season with butter and sage and grated cheese.
Pappardelle with wild boar sauce
Necessary for the preparation of pappardelle with wild boar sauce
- 400 grams of egg pappardelle
- 500 grams of ground wild boar pulp
- a glass of red wine
- 400 grams of tomato purée
- 1 onion
- 1 carrot
- 1 rib of celery
- 1 sprig of rosemary
- a few bay leaves
- salt, pepper and olive oil just enough.
Preparing pappardelle with wild boar sauce
In a large saucepan fry the carrot, onion and celery finely chopped in a little olive oil. Also add a couple of bay leaves and chopped rosemary leaves.
Put the red wine now and let it evaporate. Add the tomato purée and cook for about 2 hours over a very low heat with the lid. At the end of cooking, adjust the salt and pepper and the wild boar sauce is ready.
Cook the al dente pappardelle in plenty of salted water and season with wild boar meat sauce. Sprinkle with plenty of grated Parmesan cheese and serve warm.
Now let’s move on to the second with the typical recipe of Livorno, the cacciucco with Livorno.
The Cacciucco in Livorno
Necessary for the Cacciucco in Livorno
- 2 kilograms of mixed fish (octopus, totans, cuttlefish, redfish, mullet, eel, chickens) and anyway what you find fresh
- 2 cloves garlic
- 800 grams of chopped tomatoes
- 8 slices of stale homemade bread
- a few sage leaves
- 40 grams of olive oil
- chilli, salt and pepper just enough
Preparation of the Cacciucco to the Livornese
In a large terracotta pan fry 1 clove of garlic chopped 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 cook the sauce very slowly for about an hour, adding a little water if it tends to dry too much.
At this point put the fish clean and cut into pieces in the pan and with the lid let it simmer for about 2 hours. When cooked, it is served very hot on slices of toasted bread. The bread is rubbed with garlic and a little olive oil.
The Rotisserie
The rotisserie, are called in Tuscany the pork cutlets cooked on the grill. A very tasty and appropriate dish for a dinner with friends.
The ingredients are just, the rotisserie, which is cooked in a whole piece, dividing the cutlets only once cooked, pepper salt and a nice grill.
The rotisserie before putting it on the grill is sprinkled with salt and pepper on both sides, massaging the meat with your hands to make it stick better.
Once cooked, they are immediately eaten very hot. Of course, in a self-respecting barbecue in Tuscany there are not only pork cutlets, pork and veal steaks, sausages and skewers of both pork and veal or chicken. Consider that the cutlets are the ones that need a longer cooking, of an average of 40 minutes, so it is the first meat that is put on the grill.
The SCOTTIGLIA
ScottIGLIA is a mixture of various meats, so chicken, veal, pork, pigeon, rabbit, turkey etc.
Necessary for SCOTTIGLIA
- 800 grams of mixed meat in small pieces
- 1 onion
- 1 carrot
- 1 rib of celery
- 1 glass of red wine
- 1 garlic clove
- 600 grams of chopped tomatoes
- 1 cup meat stock
- 1 bunch parsley
- 3 basil leaves
- 8 slices of toasted stale bread.
- olive oil, chilli powder, salt, pepper just enough
Preparation of SCOTTIGLIA
Chop the carrot, onion, celery and garlic clove very finely. In a pan, possibly of terracotta with a little olive oil, fry the smells. As soon as they are golden put the meat in pieces and brown them briefly on all sides. Put the red wine now and let it evaporate completely. Now put the peeled tomatoes into small pieces and with the lid cook for about an hour, adding a little meat broth if the sauce tends to dry out too much. Now toast the slices of bread and put two slices for each dish. Pour the hot SCOTTIGLIA into the dishes and after two or three minutes serve on the table. This time to allow the meat to soak the bread well.
Let’s move on to the cakes.
Meadow Cantucci
Necessary for Prato cantucci
- 300 grams of flour
- 1 teaspoon sweet ammonia
- 160 grams of sugar
- 140 grams of almonds
- 2 eggs
- the peel of a grated 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 peel and lemon peel. Continue by slowly incorporating the flour and ammonia for sweets and work with your hands to obtain a homogeneous dough. At this point put the whole almonds in the dough and work again to mix everything well. Divide the dough into two parts and give it the shape of a little filth. In a baking tin put the wires and in the oven already hot at 180 degrees for 15 – 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and cut the loaves into many slices with the maximum thickness of one and a half centimeters. Try to cut the slices diagonally. Put the biscuits back in the oven at 150 degrees for another 20 minutes, turning them halfway through cooking. Allow to cool. They stay for several days and are yummy even cold, soaked, as Tuscan tradition wants in the wine.
Siena’s Panforte
A typical dessert of the Christmas period, together with the curlers also these from Siena.
Necessary for the Siena panforte
- 150 grams of flour
- 350 grams of chopped candied fruit
- 350 grams of sugar
- 120 grams of honey
- 400 grams of unpeeled almonds
- 50 grams of chopped orange zest
- grams 7 of cinnamon powder
- 3 cloves
- a pinch of nutmeg
- 5 grams of pepper
- 40 grams of host
Preparation of Siena’s panforte
Melt the sugar in a little water, just dissolved remove from the heat and add the candied and orange zest, stir and place on the heat to bring it to a boil, just to boil remove from the heat. At this point combine the other ingredients, namely flour, honey, almonds and spices until you get a homogeneous and firm dough. Now form a puff pastry no more than an inch and a half high. If it were too big to divide it in two and prepare two panforti. Place this pastry in a cake tin lined with baking paper and lined with hate and place in the oven at 170 degrees for about 25 minutes. Freshly cooked, dust the surface with icing sugar.
The Ricciarelli
Necessary for curlers
- 40 grams of flour
- 250 grams of sugar
- 350 grams of almonds
- 15 grams of vanilla sugar
- 20 grams of chopped candied orange
- a snow-mounted egg white
syrup:
- 40 grams of icing sugar and water just enough
for the compound
- 40 grams of flour
- 20 grams of sugar
- 40 grams of vanilla sugar
- wings (optional)
- icing sugar
Preparation of Siena curls
Finely chop the almonds and add them to the sugar, orange zest and a little flour.
Apart from dissolve the sugar in a little water to turn it into a syrup. In a bowl heat the almond paste, combine the sugar syrup and flour. At this point cover the bowl with a cloth and let the mixture rest for at least 12 hours.
After this time, pick up the dough and pour the snow-mounted egg white and vanilla sugar into it. With the dough form a ball and with a rolling pin roll out the dough about 1 centimeter thick. At this point to give the shape to the curler it takes a metal mold of that shape. With this mold make many curlers that should be placed in a baking tray covered with baking paper. Sprinkle with icing sugar and place in the oven already hot at 180 degrees for about 15 minutes. Serve cold.
