Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
chiata
(Florentine flat bread made from eggs, flour, sugar and lard, then dusted with icing
sugar).
As early as the 13th century, servants at the Abbazia di Montecelso near Siena paid tax
to the nuns in the form of
panpepato
(a pepper and honey flat bread), although legend tells
a different tale: following a siege in Siena, Sister Berta baked a revitalising flat cake of
honey, dried fruit, almonds and pepper to pep up the city's weakened inhabitants. Subse-
quently sweetened with spices, sprinkled with sugar and feasted on once a year at Christ-
mas, Siena's
panforte
(literally 'strong bread') - a flat, hard cake with nuts and candied
fruit - is now eaten year-round. An old wives' tale says it stops couples quarrelling.
Unsurprisingly, it was at the Florentine court of Catherine de' Medici that Italy's most
famous product,
gelato
(ice cream), first appeared. It's all thanks to court maestro Bernar-
do Buontalenti (1536-1608), who engineered a way of freezing sweetened milk and egg
yolks. For centuries, ice cream and sherbets - a mix of shaved ice and fruit juice served
between courses at Renaissance banquets to aid digestion - only appeared on tables of the
wealthy.
Tuscan
biscotti
(biscuits) - once served with candied fruits and sugared almonds at the
start of and between courses at Renaissance banquets - are dry, crisp and often double
baked.
Cantucci
are hard, sweet biscuits studded with almonds.
Brighidini di lamporec-
chio
are small, round aniseed-flavoured wafers;
ricciarelli
are almond biscuits, sometimes
with candied orange; and
lardpinocchiati
are studded with pine kernels. In Lucca, locals
are proud of their
buccellato
(a sweet bread loaf with sultanas and aniseed seeds), a treat
given by godparents to their godchild on their first Holy Communion and eaten with alac-
rity at all other times.
OLIVE OIL
Olive oil heads Tuscany's culinary trinity (bread and wine are the other two) and epitomises the earthy
simplicity of Tuscan cuisine: dipping chunks of bread into pools of this liquid gold or biting into a
slice of oil-doused
fettunta
(bruschetta) are sweet pleasures here.
The Etruscans were the first to cultivate olive trees and press the fruit to make oil, a process refined
by the Romans. As with wine, strict rules govern when and how olives are harvested (October to
December), the varieties used, and so on.
The best Tuscan oils wear a Chianti Classico DOP or Terre di Siena DOP label and an IGP certific-
ate of quality issued by the region's Consortium of Tuscan Olive Oil. In Florence look out for prize-
winning oils from local olive oil producer, Marchesi de' Frescobaldi.
