The Tuscan cuisine is mainly poor, although it is rich in genuine, tasty ingredients, whose excellence is well known worldwide.
This ancient cookery art has deep roots in the Tuscan peasant tradition and consists of the simple flavour of dishes made out of the vegetables generously supplied by gardens or woods, spiced with the fragrance of aromatic herbs, like garlic, rosemary and mint.
The typical local bread, baked in wood oven, does not include any salt in order to enhance the food’s spicy, tasty flavour.
Either nowadays or in the past, the dishes’ ingredients are carefully chosen before being balanced and combined.
Each small village offers its own little “casket” of specialities which can only be tasted locally, especially on the many village festivals called “sagre”.
Here are some of the main traditional Tuscan dishes: the “crostini”, small toasts of bread served with spleen or game sauce, a beam soup called “ribollita”, the “tagliolini”, thin check-pea soup noodles, the “pappardelle”, broad noodles served with hare or wildboar ragout, the wild boar in bitter-sweet, a beam-stew called “fagioli all’uccelletto”, the roasted chicken and pigeon, the “fegatelli”, spiced pieces of pork’s liver roasted in olive oil, the “scottiglia”, either a chicken, a beef or a lamb stew.
The main seasoning of the Tuscan cuisine is just the olive oil.
The local wines, like the Chianti, the Nobile of Montepulciano, the Vernaccia of San Gimignano and the famous Brunello of Montalcino have a unique flavour.
The “cacio pecorino” of the Sienese hills, a ewe’s-milk cheese still handicraft produced, the same way it was made in the past, is to be tasted with honey, fresh fruits and vegetables.
Local specialities also include the delicious charcuterie of the so-called “cinta senese”, a breed of pig with a characteristic white streep which has been reared in the Sienese area since the Middle Ages.
One of the most famous Sienese cakes, the “panforte” is a kind of spiced fruit-cake with candies, amonds and sugar, whose origins are lost in the ancient times.
The “ricciarelli” are delicious almond pastry lozenges, with candies and vanilla.
A lot of bakeries and pastry shops still produce cakes according to the ancient recipes handed down from generation to generation, like the “pan co’ santi”, a sort of sweet loaf with raisins and nuts, or the Easter “schiacciata”, a sweet bread flavoured with aniseeds.