Olive Oil, Red Wine, and Tuscan Bread, by Shelley Lance
Here’s a photo of what must be considered the Holy Trinity of Tuscan cuisine- olive oil, red wine, and Tuscan bread- all set out on the charming white marble kitchen table of our rented villa:
Olive oil: So much of what we ate in Florentine restaurants was finished with a float of beautiful olive oil, whether soup, bread, fish, or meat. We used this delicious olive oil (pictured in the photo)- made right on the property of our “agritourismo” (a combination of farm and tourist lodging), in all of our own cooking at the villa- whether we were dressing a salad, or drizzling oil over a platter of tomatoes, green beans, or grilled steak. In a cellar across the road from our villa, I watched as the ever helpful agritourismo worker, Fillipo, ladled the oil for us out of a huge terracotta urn through a funnel and into these little green tins. The tins on the table in this photo are waiting to be shipped home to the U.S. Shipping turned out to be crazy expensive, but I’m so excited about my tins of Tuscan olive oil- priceless!
Red Wine: The bottle of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano pictured here was one of the better bottle of wines we purchased during our trip, but even a carafe of house red in a casual trattoria tasted pretty darn good and was always very reasonably priced, not to say cheap. We drank white wines also, and several were very good, but Tuscany is really all about the red.
Tuscan bread: Tired of being out of bread for our breakfast on too many mornings, we finally bought these 2 great hunks of Tuscan bread, pictured in the photo, at our local grocery. From the reading I did to prepare myself for the trip, I knew that Tuscan bread was made without salt, and I didn’t expect to like it. As a professional in restaurant kitchens, every fiber in my being rebelled against the idea of bread without salt. But, actually, I adapted to the flavor and grew very fond of this bread. I especially liked the rustic texture and thick crust. So revered is the bread that every scrap is used, even when stale. Tuscan bread is truly one of the foundations of Tuscan cuisine, an essential part of ribollita (a thick porridge-like soup made of bread, beans, and vegetables), pappa al pomodoro (a thick cold soup- again, more like porridge- made with tomatoes, olive oil and stale bread) and panzanella (bread salad) as well as fettuna (toasts of Tuscan bread) topped with delights such as chicken liver paté or tomatoes, and of course- beautiful, aromatic, green olive oil. Pour yourself a glass of red wine alongside, and you’re in Tuscany!
One further note, the Tuscan bread salad we’ve been making at Dahlia since day one is not a traditional panzanella. At Dahlia, we use fresh loaves of rustic bread and grill slabs of it over apple wood, then tear it into pieces for our salad- delicious! but as I said, not traditional. Though I already knew that, traditionally, panzanella was made by soaking bread in water and then squeezing all the water out before adding the other ingredients, I never really understood this step until I encountered a loaf of day-old, not to mention 2-day old Tuscan bread sitting on the kitchen counter. Whoa! that is one tough loaf of bread!
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