With the region’s great agricultural heritage, it is not surprising that Tuscan food is strongly linked to the land. Most Tuscan dishes are not ‘refined’, in either sense of the word. La cucina toscana is peasant food of ingenuity, made with unrefined, natural foodstuffs raised, grown, foraged or fished in Tuscany. So what foods are essential to the Tuscan table?
OLIVES
First has to be the emblematic olive, and especially the oil it produces. It is impossible to overstate how fundamental this is to Tuscan food. First-pressing, extra-virgin olive oil is not a ‘cooking medium’, nor something reserved for salads. It is an ingredient that contributes much to the flavour (and nutritional goodness) of the dishes it is used in. There are precious few Tuscan dishes in which oil is not used.
Traditionally, even sweet dishes would often use oil rather than butter, and simple sweet treats such as cenci and fritters would be fried in oil. The olive-oil pastry of sfratti from Pitigliano, surrounding the walnut and honey filling, is a delicious example. From the base for frying – the soffritto – to the joys of newly pressed oil being poured (not ‘drizzled’) over a hot toasted bruschetta; from the dip for early raw vegetables in pinzimonio to the ‘benediction’ of oil over beans or soup, and warm, oilbathed schiacciata bread
