|
|
 |
ETWAS ÜBER DER ÖRTLICHEN GASTRONOMIE |
|
|
|
As in all Tuscany and in the Senese, also in Montepulciano the tradition of the " well and healthy eating" is still intact. Both in the city and in the environs it's possible to find restaurants and taverns, where one cooks still in the old housewifes' way, that is in the way of the women for which cooking was yes a duty, but also a pleasure...
And still today are just these women, which in occasion of the district- parties and popular demonstrations or during the gastronomical appointments , prepare simple and genuine dishes with big ability.
They are simple dishes, also if not easy to preparare: all the ingredients (few at a time) are respectfully put together so that the taste of every element is never suffocated by another one. For exemple the famous beefsteak, to be a really "Florentine", must have that type of meat, that oil, that fire of chestnut wood.
In Montepulciano you can find delicious specialties and above all the "Noble Wine of Montepulciano", one of most important Italian red wines, derived from the gentle Prugnolo vine (big Sangiovese), with garnet red color and dry taste. Excellent, moreover, is the Pecorino-cheese, produced nowadays by Sardinian shepherds immigrated in the zone, but with the same procedure in use from the Middle Ages. This cheese is excellent in all the its different phases of maturation, from fresh to seasoned, the last one is normally served at the end of the meal or as afternoon snack. The Ravaggiolo is, instead, a tender cheese, that is preserved in leaves of fern.
Beyond the Pecorino cheese, the ham, the tasty crostini with spleen and livers, the pansanto ( seasoned bread with boiled cauliflower, vinegar and oil), the "bruschetta" with the grilled bread, new oil and a clove of garlic rubbed above it, the panzanella (stale bread, weted with water, seasoned with tomato, oil, onion, basil and other aromas), a good dish of beans "al fiasco" spinkled with raw oil, they already would constitute an excellent meal: but it's obligatory to taste the pici, a kind of handmade spaghetti, seasoned meat sauce.
With the pici, it's advisable a Red of Montepulciano DOC that is ok also with the appetizers ( crostini with the spleen and salumi senesi). Always concerning the first courses, we remember the pappardelle with hare sauce: ancient dish of etruscan origin; the bread soup: symbol of the senese kitchen; the riboliita a vegetables soup that is "reboiled" and finally the soup with spelt. According to the season you can taste: grilled meats or "mixed roast" with grilled mushrooms, or grilled chicken and faraona,"nana" (duck) or lamb, porchetta (pork) cooked with salt, garlic and rosemary, turkey, sausages, rabbit, bovine meat, pigeon and various game.
All these accompanied with the ciaccia (bread's dough seasoned with oil) - or the fragrant bread, without salt to offend not the other tastes. We can continue with the cantucci, almonds biscuits, that normally are diped in the locally produced Vinsanto, the "castagnaccio" and the "crogetti", typical cookies of Carnival. Seasonal cake, for the November festivity, is the "ciaccia of the deads", made with flour, lard, raisins and walnuts, to be found in the bakeries of the town.
|
|
|
|
|
