Tasting Tuscany - Primo Piatto

Every recollection of our trip to Italy in 2006 is inevitably linked from scenery and place to the food experienced and savored there. Keeping breakfasts to simple espresso with pastry combos like the locals and patronizing the occasional deli for lunches ensured generous gelato sampling and remarkable dinner cuisine.

Our "first course" in Tuscan dining...

Primo Piatto – Certaldo Alto

By far, the best overall eating experiences were in the Tuscany region, particularly in the Certaldo/Fiano region. Having a kitchen in our villa apartment at Il Pozzo coupled with a visit to the modern supermarket in nearby Poggibonsi meant the food budget could be stretched for more dinners out—and each was deliciously long and memorable!

Our first night in Certaldo, we drove to the medieval part of town, called Certaldo Alto. As we waited for the hotel’s restaurant Il Castello to open for dinner, we wandered about the ancient stone bricked city that once housed the governor, but was now home to art and relics of the past.

When it finally appeared that the restaurant was open, our host greeted us warmly—all in Italian! He didn’t speak a word of English. His first customers for the evening, we practiced the spattering of Italian we had learned -- and mostly pointed to the items we identified in the menu.

As we sat outside in a covered terrace, we relished the purely Tuscan moment we had anticipated: an authentic Tuscan meal with a non-English speaker. Our host poured bottled water into our water glasses, and we began our first of many Tuscan dinner rituals: waiting!

I took the opportunity to order a famous Tuscan soup called Ribolitta (mostly made of leftover bread and vegetables, white beans, and olive oil; Geoff ordered a White bean soup. Our host, observing our inexperience, leaned over a drizzled olive oil over my ribolitta and motioned toward the bread loaf. We had already discovered that the saltless, sourdough Tuscan bread did not appeal as an appetizer; but it made a great partner to the hearty soups.

My ribolitta would definitely qualify as a comfort food, especially in the cooler months. It was a meal in itself. But dinner was not over.

Rosemary made its first grand appearance on my grilled meats: chicken leg, pork loin, steak, and sausage. These were accompanied by an order of deep fried vegetables: mostly artichokes. Geoff played it safe with a steak, but was pleasantly surprised by the Tuscan seasonings that enhanced the beef so well.

This would be the first of several dining moments in Tuscany that we still yearn to repeat.