Artisan Food of Tuscany

Pecorino, Brusco, Caciotta, Guttus, Marzolino, Morello, Nerina, Pastorello, Raviggiolo. These are the many types of Tuscan cheese. The most famous of all undoubtedly is Pecorino, which has dozens of sub kinds itself. True food artisans in Tuscany buy or produce the milk from local producers only.

For instance, the famous pecorino of Pienza is produced with milk from sheep grazing local grass, which has peculiar qualities and taste. The result is a unique cheese, produced in limited quantities, often only found locally. Moreover, each cheese kind has its season. Marzolino is the newly made cheese, not aged at all, and is especially loved for its milky taste and softness. It is usually spoused with delicate ingredients for its unobtrusive taste.

Raviggiolo is also another very delicate cheese. It is extremely soft and milky. It must be kept refrigerated and eaten within a few days. It is extremely good with jam, honey or just plain.

Lovers of stronger tastes have a large variety of aged Pecorino cheeses to taste. Mid to long aging produces the "Semistagionato" and "Stagionato" varieties. Aging can take place in oak-wood ashes, wrapped in walnut or grape leaves, inside a clay hole in the ground, or buried in red-grape must. Each kind has a very distinctive, sharp taste, but the smell is never excessively strong.

The pecorino di fossa, the one matured in clay holes, is much sharper and smellier, perfect to melt with your favorite pasta, or to pair with a full bodied red wine.

Although mass production also reached Tuscany, there still is a very large number of artisans that produce cheese as it was done hundreds of years ago. Although much more hygienic, the process is attentive as only a small production batch can guarantee. If you add passion and constant dedication to perfecting a centennial tradition, the end result is an unmatched cheese.

Wanto become an expert on Tuscan cheese? Read this page on Typical Tuscan Cheeses

If you like the variety of Tuscan cheeses, you will LOVE that of Tuscan cold cuts. There are at least 11 different kinds of cold cuts. Prosciutto, Salame, Finocchiona, Spalla, Rigatino, Ghiandaio, Salsicce, Ventresca, Soppressata, Buristo, and Guanciale.

Each cold cut is made with different techniques and of course different parts of the animal. Mostly composed of pork meat, this kind of food originates in the countryside as a way of preserving the slaughtered pig meat (usually carried out at the beginning of November). Some parts of the animal were cooked, while others were cured with salt, pepper and other spices to let it dry.

While some cultures in the world just produced beef jerky, Italians were able to master the art of preserving meat without refrigerators, and Tuscans are among the best ones at it, altogether with their neighbors from Umbria. Not a single portion of the pig is thrown away. Even the blood is collected and reused to prepare Buristo and Migliacci.

The master butcher is called Norcino, and he needs to be very skillful at killing and cutting the pig efficiently. His work is carried out throughout one or maximum two days. A pig that is alive in the morning, by 10 pm has already been transformed into 2 prosciutti and 2 spalle, one buristo and one soppressata, two guanciale, one finocchiona, some tens of raw sausages, one or two capocollo and one or two ghiandaias, two flat rigatino pieces, and one or more salame, depending on the desired size of each.

The love for producing artisan cold cuts in Tuscany starts with the care for the pig. The animal is well fed only natural fodder with no chemicals. Acorns are especially loved by pigs, and also produce lean and flavorful meat. For as unusual as it may seem, farmers raising a small number of pigs become very fond of them, and are extremely sorry when the slaughtering day comes.

Often times, farmers are also the butchers, baring the brunt of their deeds on their animal friends. The pains of a pig farmer are in total antithesis with modern animal slaughter houses. The love of the norcino for his pigs is carried on to the food he produces, as a way of honoring them the best way possible.

This is an important aspect to understand as to why artisan cold cut production in Tuscany gifts the world with some of the most spectacular foods you will ever try.

All the details about these delicious handmade foods can be found reading the Tuscan cold cuts page.

Mushrooms and truffles are not artisan foods per se. However, the way they are searched prepared for consumption and used in the making of recipes definitely belongs to the patient world of hand crafting.

There is a great variety of mushrooms in Tuscany, but the most renown of all are Porcini for their taste, high quality, versatility, high level of nutrients and texture. You can use Porcini for pasta sauces, with meat, on tarts, on pizza, and to make fantastic oil preserves. Porcini mushrooms are very delicate and spoil easily. It is important to use them within one or two days after they were picked.

Expert mushroom hunters know the best woods and time to pick the best Porcini. This mushroom family also needs special climatic conditions and the right kind of soil to thrive. Not everyone can bring home a basket full of Porcini.
The clean up process is also labor intensive and requires skills. Water would damage this gift of the woods, therefore only a dry brush and a knife are employed to clean Porcini. Then, depending on their final use, they are cooked or prepared further.

Truffles are another gift of Tuscan woods. Nothing to do with mushrooms, in case you are wondering, and neither with potatoes. Truffles are still defined vaguely, but I can tell you that they grow near the roots of specific trees, and this is a major factor in determining the kind of truffles you will have.

Not all woodlands are good for truffles; a special concoction of tree varieties, humus, climatic conditions, ground morphology and some luck is necessary to have a truffle woodland. Even in that case, you are not even half way through. How will you find truffles? They are well hidden under a half foot of dirt, and your nose is not equipped to pick up its smell, despite how strong it might be.

In the past they used pigs, notoriously gluttonous of truffles. But pigs are hard to train, and they end up eating the truffles. Dogs, and especially poodles, are the perfect truffle hunting machine.

However, it takes hard work and some years to train a truffle hunting dog properly, plus the dog must be stirred into the job from a very early age! Needless to say it takes skills (often kept within a family lineage of truffle hunters) and money to breed up a good truffle hunting dog. The rewards will be worth it of course.

If a truffle hunter is lucky, he finds a truffle woodland owned by others and shares the "harvest" with the landlords. However, he also needs to keep the bush clean and foster the growth of a balanced varieties of trees in order to maintain the truffle production.

In a sense, the artisan work around truffles is done beforehand. When you find yourself in front of a black or white truffle, all the hard work is done, and you are left with just the enjoyment of it. Now that you know what lays behind that pebble of concentrated taste, give it a thought though. It will make all the tastier!

Do you know how to keep and clean this golden food? Here's how you can preserve truffles