The Cooking and Cuisine of Tuscany

[Franci]

I'm planning to make pappardelle alla (sulla?) lepre tomorrow. Recipes online seem to vary quite a bit. Does anyone have a good one? Oh, and should I serve with or without parmesan?

←

Sulla lepre. It is a toscal dialect expression

I am sure Divina has good tips, but reading this recipe should not turn bad

Pappardelle sulla lepre

P.S.: If I had the time I'd prefer a real stock. No cheese.

Edited November 4, 2006 by Franci (log)

[Pontormo]

Klary: If it's not too late, let me add that you should save the liver.

If your butcher cleans the rabbits for customers, ask him or her to reserve several. I have a recipe at home. I'll have to figure out the source, but the instructions say that chicken livers can be used, but rabbit is better.

ETA: It would have to be for another day since it's another primo. However, given the recommended substitutions, I imagine rabbit liver could be used for a crostino-spread.

Carol Field's In Nonna's Kitchen has a recipe for spinach pasta sauced with fresh sage, grappa, only 5 ounces of the livers, onion, and a couple of tomatoes. Serves 2-3 as main dish. Looks good.

Edited November 4, 2006 by Pontormo (log)

[divina]

The Alessi recipe listed above is a bit complex.

We always start with the soffritto, carrot, onion and celery, minced finely and sauteed in oil until golden ( ok.. I really get it close to burning.. loke the carmelization)

then I brown the lepre ( wild hare) or wild boar..etc.. and splash with red wine.

Add tomato sauce ( if you like) salt to taste.. season with any other flavors( juniper, bay leaves salt pepper...etc.)

cover and cook.

When the hare is tender it will fall off the bone...

Take the hare off the bone and chop finely ( really mince) and put back into the sauce and finish cooking.

IF you have the rabbit liver, you would also mince that up and add now. otherwise the liver makes it bitter.

It is served without cheese as to not hide the flavor of the hare.

Grated lemon zest is always a nice touch in ragu.

[Chufi]

Thanks divina! the hare ( 1 huge leg) is simmering away as we speak and I did it almost as you decribed (before reading your post!). The house smells great No liver though. btw wouldn't hare liver be better than the rabbit liver? assuming one could get that?

Edited November 5, 2006 by Chufi (log)

[Chufi]

Dinner:

pappardelle sulla lepre. Homemade pasta!

I pretty much did what divina described above. Flavorings were juniper, thyme, rosemary, fennel seeds, nutmeg. Braised the meat in red wine and porcini stock until really tender. A tiny bit of lemon zest at the end. Oh, and I forgot to buy celery, so I added some chopped up celeriac.

I have to admit.. I was sorely tempted to add cheese. I do love pasta with a meatsauce and cheese! But, I let Dennis taste the sauce, and his verdict was: no cheese! The man can't cook, but he sure has a good palate and he was so right. The cheese would have really drowned the beautiful complex flavor of the sauce. The sauce is actually a kind of chopped up game-stew, with the deep and sweet and mellow flavors of fall.

[Pontormo]

Looks absolutely wonderful, Klary!

As for livers, I am making due with chicken. Also picked up juniper berries. I don't know the difference between rabbits and hares, especially when it comes to eating their visceral matter. Please explain.

[Franci]

Dinner:

pappardelle sulla lepre. Homemade pasta!

Really nice job Chufi!

[Pontormo]

Tonight, I made the crostini di fegatini that I mentioned earlier as a typical Tuscan antipasto. I am linking a report in Daniel's Cookbook Roulette thread given its source.

Rest of dinner was not exactly assembled in traditional fashion and probably the only other Florentine quality was the sautéed spinach. Does anyone know why dishes prepared with spinach are called "a la Florentine"? Anyway, it was my first spinach after the recent scare and it was also quite good.

[Pan]

I love Tuscany and Tuscan food and will enjoy watching everyone's efforts.

Baking and confections haven't been mentioned much yet, except inasmuch as breads are saltless. Tuscany, or specifically, the city of Prato, is the home of the famous canticcini, aka biscotti di Prato. Siena is the wellspring of the wonderful panforte, which come in several types; and also ricciarelli, which are essentially marzipane cookies. Wonderful focaccie of various kinds are also to be found in Tuscany. Crostate (little tarts) are a traditional way to end a meal if dessert is not in the form of ripe fruit or biscotti and Vin Santo. I also enjoyed torrone and various other pastries in Tuscany.

[fortedei]

I love Tuscany and Tuscan food and will enjoy watching everyone's efforts.

Baking and confections haven't been mentioned much yet, except inasmuch as breads are saltless. Tuscany, or specifically, the city of Prato, is the home of the famous canticcini, aka biscotti di Prato. Siena is the wellspring of the wonderful panforte, which come in several types; and also ricciarelli, which are essentially marzipane cookies. Wonderful focaccie of various kinds are also to be found in Tuscany. Crostate (little tarts) are a traditional way to end a meal if dessert is not in the form of ripe fruit or biscotti and Vin Santo. I also enjoyed torrone and various other pastries in Tuscany.

←

Canticcini? What is that?

[Pan]

I love Tuscany and Tuscan food and will enjoy watching everyone's efforts.

Baking and confections haven't been mentioned much yet, except inasmuch as breads are saltless. Tuscany, or specifically, the city of Prato, is the home of the famous canticcini, aka biscotti di Prato. Siena is the wellspring of the wonderful panforte, which come in several types; and also ricciarelli, which are essentially marzipane cookies. Wonderful focaccie of various kinds are also to be found in Tuscany. Crostate (little tarts) are a traditional way to end a meal if dessert is not in the form of ripe fruit or biscotti and Vin Santo. I also enjoyed torrone and various other pastries in Tuscany.

←

Canticcini? What is that?

←

A typo! I mean cantuccini! I also made a grammar mistake: Panforte is singular (plural=panforti), so panforte comes in several varieties. The ones I remember are tipo margherita, tipo cioccolato, tipo marzapane, and there's another one that I didn't like as much and don't recall the name of, which as I recall tasted more obviously of spices.

Edited November 6, 2006 by Pan (log)

[Chufi]

  I don't know the difference between rabbits and hares, especially when it comes to eating their visceral matter.  Please explain.

←

wikipedia on rabbit

wikipedia on hare

edited to add, divina is blogging this week, check out her blog in General Food Topics here!

Edited November 6, 2006 by Chufi (log)

[hathor]

I've seen hare in the woods around here....and they are big enough that you go, "Whoa!! What the h*ll was that???" as it hops away.

Lunch included a grilled chicken...or pollo alla brace...or polo allo ferro. Grilling meats is a core prepartion in both Umbria and Tuscany. This one was particularly tasty. You know when the taste matches expectations?

[divina]

Whoppee I am the guest egblogger this week. so join me... I am working this week so will be three days of classes.

Dreaming about new oil, white truffles, wild boar.... and my desserts too!

on my site there are TONS of recipes for you to try!

Minestrone Ribolitta... even panforte and riccarelli!!!

[Pontormo]

Chufi: The word "lepre" simply didn't register as hare for me since I was thinking of "lapin" vs. "coniglio." In any respect, I don't know if Carol Field's recipe for a Tuscan grandmother's sauce calls for the livers of rabbit (not to be found inside hares, true, unless they're terribly aggressive) as a substitute for ones from hares.

In her book on Tuscan food, Nancy Harmon Jenkins includes a recipe for pappardelle all'anatra since she says the dish you prepared is difficult for most home cooks since it's hard to find hares, let alone follow the instructions of most old, original recipes which begin "'first catch your hare'" (p. 89) and then go on calling for the blood, lungs, heart, etc. NHJ lists simply the duck's liver, saying the dish is associated with Hathor's nearby Arezzo.

* * *

As for my crostini, turns out the use of anchovies and capers is not uncommon.

* * *

And Pan, since you like biscotti di Prato so much, if you haven't seen it before, check out Adam Balic's Tuscan thread on a visit to his in-laws.

[divina]

Since when they are alive both the hare and the rabbits have livers... they are finely chopped and added at the end to the sauce.

Yes, anchovy and capers ( I also like the vinegar the capers are packed in) added to my chicken liver crostini.

Quite traditional.

[divina]

more Tuscan thoughts based on reading....

I toured the Mattei Biscotto factory,... they do not cook their biscotto twice.. so really are not BI-s-COTTI cooked twice.

They also make one of my favorites Brutti ma Buoni, ugly but good, which I may have to whip up for the blog.

Spinach being "florentine".--back to Catherine de MEdici bringing her chefs to France when she got married. up until there there were really no cookbooks for the people. The French codified the recipes they saw and gave them names.

Florentines eat spinach or chard with everything hence the name.

Here in FLorence, Veal Florentine.. has peas!

[FoodMan]

What a gorgeous looking dish Klary! I can almost taste it.

Well, I debated whether I should include my post about the saltless bread as part of my Tuscan dinner or not. NOT, it deserves its own post no matter what Pontormo says . The loaves came out so good after a long rest in the fridge before baking and using a long fermenting sponge. I used the recipe from Carol Field's The Italian Baker and made both the white flour variety (the large round one) and the one with some whole wheat flour (the torpedo shaped ones). Seriously Pontormo, you should give these another chance.

[FoodMan]

Saturday's Tuscan Dinner:

While cooking the dinner, my wife prepared these Crostini. Using the saltless breead I baked and the ricotta cheese I made that morning. Very simple grilled bread topped with the cheese and arugula dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. The bacony things in the center are thin slices of home cured lardo (made from the belly not back though). These were so good we were at the risk of eating too much and ruining our dinner. The salty lardo worked very well here since both the ricotta and bread are very low in salt.

For main course I prepared a recipe from Jamie's Italy (Jamie Oliver that is, and yes I am a big fan ). He said he had it in a trattoria in Florence...so that makes it Tuscan, right? The dish is Pork chops stuffed with a sage, butter, dried apricots and proscuitto. The chops are pan seared and baked on top of potatoes that have already been more or less cooked, so the pork only bakes for 10 minutes or so and stays moist. The potatoes are baked with some good home cured Pancetta as well. I did brine the chops even though the recipe does not ask for it. I pretty much always do with pork chops. All in all the dish was very tasty, moist and worked with the cold weather we had this weekend. We drank some decent Chianti with our dinner.

[Pontormo]

Elie, you KNOW I am in awe of your baking skills, don't you?

Just because I don't care for something myself doesn't mean I can't admire its beauty, the skill that went into making it, and appreciate the fact that all of us have different taste. If you like it, that's all that matters!

It's just that when I have spent months living in Italy it was in Florence and I just wasn't crazy about saltless bread. I'd tend to buy other types when given the opportunity. Let's say I like it more than panforte so I can incur the wrath of Pan, too.

Funny, some time this summer I forgot to put salt in a batch of bread I prepared and a Dame d'Escoffier who did some of her training (staging? not sure) in Italy overheard me me telling this to someone else. She piped up, saying, "Well, you've just made pane Toscana!" We started talking. She said a longtime friend of hers in the culinary world says you can't get good bread in Florence anymore. I wouldn't go that far--and do intend to bake at least two Tuscan specialities during November.

Your wife's crostini look delicious. The texture of your bread, perfect, too. The lardo's impressive and I now need to cook dinner since the pork chops are making me hungry.

* * *

Divina: thanks for the confirmation regarding crostini and the surprising discovery about cookies that Florentines all call BIS-cotti di Prato. I think any story about Caterina de Medici is considered suspect these days. However, the HIGHLY salted spinach you get in Florentine restaurants is up there as one of my favorite things.

Edited November 6, 2006 by Pontormo (log)

[Kevin72]

Oh, that lardo! Wonderful looking meal.

I don't know what it is about saltless bread that it gets so porous: I decided to make my own batch this weekend but added more salt: I'd done my experimentation with that last year and now have it out of my system. This batch wasn't nearly as porous, though I didn't do the overnight age in the fridge with the dough since I ran out of time. It's a demanding bread!

Let me know how the bread holds up in subsequent days. Mine turned dry and fell apart over the course of that week.

[Franci]

Elie, you KNOW I am in awe of your baking skills, don't you?

Just because I don't care for something myself doesn't mean I can't admire its beauty, the skill that went into making it, and appreciate the fact that all of us have different taste.  If you like it, that's all that matters!

It's just that when I have spent months living in Italy it was in Florence and I just wasn't crazy about saltless bread.  I'd tend to buy other types when given the opportunity.  Let's say I like it more than panforte so I can incur the wrath of Pan, too.

Elie, your bread looks very good.

But I am with you Pontormo, I really cannot eat pane toscano or umbro.

I guess the only real reason to eat pane toscano would be because prosciutto toscano is pretty salty.

[FoodMan]

Kevin-

With Tuscan bread it is more than experimentation. I actually do like it every so often. This is the first time I use this recipe though and I like it more than my regular one, the one from The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

The loaf that we still have more than half of is the big round one, and it is dryish. The more the better to make a kale and bread soup today or tomorrow. Oh, yeah I also froze one of the torpedo shaped ones. we'll see how that holds up.

[Pan]

Elie, you KNOW I am in awe of your baking skills, don't you?

Just because I don't care for something myself doesn't mean I can't admire its beauty, the skill that went into making it, and appreciate the fact that all of us have different taste.  If you like it, that's all that matters!

It's just that when I have spent months living in Italy it was in Florence and I just wasn't crazy about saltless bread.  I'd tend to buy other types when given the opportunity.  Let's say I like it more than panforte so I can incur the wrath of Pan, too.[...]

←

Not everyone likes panforte. More for me!

I did read Adam's thread about his visit to Prato. Like most any thread started by Adam, it's great!

[Kevin72]

Is this Adam thread recent, or is it the one from 05? Did I miss another Adam travel thread?!