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The Senese countryside can teach us much about quality: the combination of aesthetical beauty with the careful modifications worked over the centuries by man; beauty without opulence and aesthetics at the court of sobriety, without heaviness.
The Senese cuisine is based on four or five essential ingredients. Fat in the condiments is reduced to a bare minimum. The fundamentals lie in the flavour and in the fragrance as well as in the quality of the products.
Not only the wine, from Chianti to Brunello, to the Vernaccia of San Gimignano, but also the extra-virgin olive oil, the pecorino from the "crete" of Siena, durum wheat, typical sweets, honey from Montalcino, truffles from San Giovanni d'Asso and Asciano, salamis, flavourful meat, fruit of the chianina breed of cattle: these are the fundamentals of the Senesce alimentary countryside.
The main elements of this cuisine are light and flavourful, still relying often on the spit and the grill. With the constant presence of olive oil, vegetables, good bread without salt which is found at the base of the traditional Senese soups.
Among the winter soups, the ribollita also reigns here. The mushroom soup is also very tasty. Especially when it is eaten with old, toasted bread smeared with garlic and placed in a soup dish in alternating layers of bread and broth prepared with seasonings ( onion, celery, carrots) and mushrooms. In the summer, another typical dish is the
panzanella. It is a triumph for stale bread which is placed in water to soften and then mixed with basil, onion and then with olive oil, vinegar and salt.
Among the antique specialities are: pici. These are the Senese version of spaghetti made by hand and served with meat sauces or with olive oil and garlic, or, if there is nothing else around, with a "briciolata" (bread crumbs sautéed in olive oil.)
Today you can sample these dishes in restaurants or on farms, in refined variations, but the fundamentals are always the same: the fragrance of herbs, bread with a hearty crust, olive oil, typical meats and then the flavour of full-bodied and elegant wines which are as harmonious as the hills in which they are produced. |
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Brunello from Montalcino is a rich wine, which is served best with dishes which are just as rich. Dishes which are best-suited for a Brunello are rare or well-cooked meat which have undergone a long cooking time and preparation. Ideal dishes are meat beef or wild game casseroles, pot roasts and salmi.
A dish which goes well with the Brunello is beef "scottiglia", a Tuscan dish of mixed meat stew which cooks in a pot. This can also be made with wild boar. Also in this case, the recipe is an old-fashioned "home-made" dish, which goes well with a Brunello precisely because it is savoury meat, which is cooked for a long time (this corresponds well with the long ageing time of the wine) permitting an intensity of flavours and aromas which go well with the Brunello's degree of concentration. |
