RECIPES

Bruschetta al pomodoro ("ch" should be pronounced "k"!)

The secret of a good Bruschetta is first of all the fresh ingredients, secondly a good olive oil! This is how Bruschetta is done in Tuscany:
Chop some ripe tomatoes and cut away the wet insides first (or leave the chopped tomatoes to drip with some salt). Toast a slice of yesterday's bread, possibly over a real fire, and rub the top surface with a piece of garlic. Roll some leaves of basil up and cut in thin slices. Top the bread with the tomato pieces, basil, salt and pepper and pour over a generous amount of extra virgin cold press olive oil.

Serve with an aromatic white or fizzy wine, if red it should be young.

Panzanella salad with spelt (great in spring and summer)

Spelt (farro) is this fantastic cereal which resembles barley (orzo) which grows here in Tuscany and it is frequently used in soups and salads. Here's a great summer recipe:
Boil the spelt in salted water for about 20 min. Make sure it doesn't over cook, drain it and leave it to cool on a tray. Finely chop a red onion and leave it in a good red wine vinegar to soak for half an hour. Cut some cherry tomatoes in halves and cut a cucumber in cubes (remove the inside first). Roast a handful of pine-nuts. Mix all ingredients and add basil, salt and pepper - and extra virgin olive oil.

Pesto (even if not strictly Tuscan, how can we leave it out?)

Pesto is originally from Liguria, a region which confines with Tuscan to the North-west. Even if a regional sauce, it has found its way to many a kitchen world wide and you will find many versions of its recipe. But basically pesto is made from fresh basil leaves, pine-nuts, cheese (we suggest a mix of Pecorino Romano and Parmigiano), garlic, very good cold press olive oil (a bad one could spoil the lot), and a sprinkle of sea salt. Portions could be: 2 handfuls of basil leaves, 2 spoonful of pine nuts, 2 chunks (30gr) of both cheeses grated, 2 garlic cloves, a generous pouring of olive oil. All ingredients are mixed together in a mixer.
Pesto is usually served with pasta such as linguine. You can add some roasted pine nuts and some fresh cherry tomatoes. If you are a big pesto fan, you could make pesto lasagna, crostoni with mozzarella and pesto, pesto crostini with an antipasto, etc.

Crostoni (great as antipasto, but a variety can also form a meal)

Crostini (small crust) are a typical part of the Tuscan antipasti. Usually the crostini are slices of two to three day old bread, roasted or toasted and then topped with toppings like "fegatini" (chicken liver pate), or Tuscan white beans, sliced tomatoes that are then covered with good olive oil.
Crostoni on the other hand have become quite popular lately in the Florentine Enotecas and are basically larger sliced pieces of Tuscan bread (so the unsalted kind) that are toasted with cheeses such as either Pecorino Fresco, Gorgonzola, Taleggio or Mozzarella. You toast the bread slices in the oven with a layer of one of these Italian cheeses and you top with for example sliced tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, onion, prosciutto, walnuts (warmed with the cheese) - or honey, argali, olive oil and salt and pepper (just before serving).

Here's a couple of ideas:
Crostone of Mozzarella with tomatoes, roasted prostitute (sprinkle with salt, pepper and olive oil on before serving)

Crostoni of Gorgonzola with honey and walnuts (sprinkle the honey before serving)

Crostoni of Pecorino with sliced tomatoes and spring onions (sprinkle with oregano, salt, pepper and olive oil before serving).

Serve with a full-bodied red

Vegetarian Antipasto of Meditarranean Vegetables

The Italian menu is divided into antipasto (appetizers), primi (pasta and soups), secondi (meat or fish) and dolci (desserts).
Only in very special occasions would you sit down and do all four, often at the restaurant or at home you would have two - and if you must - a dessert.
The typical Tuscan Antipasto consist as mentioned earlier by some crostini (one with chicken liver pate - loved only by the locals it seems) and the other with either Tuscan beans, or bruschetta, along side with Tuscan salami (a large rough grained salame with pepper corns), Tuscan Prosciutto (similar to Parma only a little more salty), and Finocchiona (a soft salame, finer grained and with fennel seeds).
Well, not much of a recipe for that, so here's a suggestion to a vegetarian antipasto, particularly nice in the summer:
Oven-bake a red and a white pepper until outer skin turns a little brown. Put in cool water, and as soon as manageable, rip of the outer skins and clean from the seeds. Cut in thin slices and put in small bowl with olive oil and slices of garlic.
Slice a couple of zucchinis in very thin slices (possibly using a slicing machine) and layer them on a plate and sprinkle some sea salt in between each layer and a little bit of good white wine vinegar (make sure to get a good one). Let the zucchini rest for half an hour, drain them from their water and put them in a small bowl and pour your good olive oil over them.
Then you take an egg-plant, cut it in slices (not as thin as the zucchini) and layer them with salt in between each layer. After about an hour they will have lost some of their water and you oven grill them. Take them out when browning and as soon as they've cooled, add freshly cut parsley, garlic and olive oil.
If you have the possibility of finding really fresh garlic (of the kind that we call red garlic here in Tuscany) which on this climate usually is findable in May, then you could make these delicious pickled garlic cloves and serve them with your vegetarian antipasto. The garlic is cleaned. Boil good quality white wine vinegar and add fresh herbs like rosemary, bayleaves, thyme and then black pepper corns. Throw the garlic in and let boil for 2/3 minutes - not longer. Take out the garlic and let both cool down completely, then reunite and jar.
Arrange the vegetables on a plate for each person, possibly joined by a Brushetta or anything else of your choice.