Flavors of Tuscany: Traditional Recipes from the Tuscan Countryside - Rilegato

Nancy Harmon Jenkins is the author of a number of books, including Flavors of Puglia and The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook.  A contributing editor to Food & Wine, she writes often for the New York Times and other national and international publications.  She divides her time between Cortona, Italy, and the coast of Maine.

Tuscan Beanpot Beans (fagioli al fiasco)

6 to 8 servings

Beans fit right into the Tuscan larder because they're a) cheap, b) easy to store, c) cheap, d) painlessly easy to prepare, and e) cheap again, and as nourishing as meat, an important consideration for thrifty Tuscan cooks.  Like potatoes, beans are one of the few vegetables that are served as a true contorno, an accompaniment to meat, most often pork in some form, whether sausages, chops, or slices of roasted loin.  But they are just as often served on their own as a main dish.

The secret, and it's the only secret, to making good beans is to cook them as slowly as possible, just below the simmering point, for hours and hours.  The gentlest heat comes from the bread oven after the bread has come out, or from a corner of the hearth where the pot can be left, with ashes and embers heaped around it, from morning till suppertime.  Or cook them, as modern Tuscan cooks do, in an earthenware pot on top of the stove over the gentlest possible heat.

The beans used in Tuscany are often the long, fat, white beans called cannellini or toscanelli, but in some areas speckled borlotti beans are preferred, while around Pescia, cooks seek out Sorano beans from the Sorano valley.  Each bean has its qualities and local cooks swear by local beans and only local beans.  If you're ever in Lucca, the Antica Bottega di Prospero, via Santa Lucia 13 in the heart of town, has an excellent selection of beans, including all of the above plus scritti (the name means "written on" and the beans look like smaller versions of borlotti with their hieroglyphic tracings), piattellini (small, flat white beans), alberghini, and cicerchie, old-fashioned chickpeas that look like dried fave.  Rarest of all are the creamy yellow, almost round beans called zolfini, from the area around Montevarchi, in the Arno valley south of Florence, and said to be indispensable for a proper Ribollita.  Pale yellow zolfini are similar to what we call sulfur beans in Maine, but Dario Cecchini, who is something of a bean expert, as well as a great butcher assures me that they are ancient Tuscan beans and not from the New World at all.

A Tuscan bean pot is shaped a little like a traditional Chianti wine bottle, a narrow neck swelling to a bulbous base.  The ones I buy from a potter in Cortona are particularly handsome, glazed bright yellow and splashed with viridian green.  The shape is ideal for cooking beans, the narrow neck helping to retain moisture while the base gives the beans plenty of room for expansion.  I have often been puzzled by almost universal instructions in recipe books to cook fagioli al fiasco in a traditional glass Chianti bottle, first removing the woven straw basket that cradles the base.  Were beans ever actually cooked in an empty Chianti fiasco? None of the traditional cooks I've asked about this would confirm it and it seems highly unlikely when you stop to think about it--once beans the size of cannellini, for instance, have swelled in the cooking liquid, they're almost impossible to shake out of the bottle.  I suspect that some unwitting food writer years ago misinterpreted instructions to cook beans in a fiasco, meaning the kind of fiasco my Cortonese potter makes, and food writers ever since have followed suit.

If you don't have a Tuscan fiasco, use an earthenware bean pot or a high, straight-sided terra-cotta casserole, remembering that clay vessels will crack on an electric ring.  A heavy enameled cast-iron pan with a lid is a fine alternative.

1 1/2 cups dried beans, soaked overnight in water to cover
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 or 3 sprigs fresh sage
1 small white or yellow onion, quartered
1 or 2 cloves garlic, peeled
Salt to taste

Drain the beans from their soaking liquid and place in the bean pot with fresh water to cover to a depth of 1 inch.  Add all the ingredients except the salt to the pot and bring very, very slowly to a simmer.  When the liquid is just simmering, cover the pot and continue cooking until the beans are very tender but not falling apart.  The liquid should shimmer with the heat and never come to a rolling boil.  Check the beans from time to time and if more water is needed, add only boiling water to the pot.  It is impossible to give an accurate cooking time because so much depends on the age and size of the beans--and age, at least, is nearly impossible to determine unless you've grown them yourself or know the farmer who did so.  Count on at least 1 1/2 hours, but it can take up to 3 hours for the beans to soften to that tenderly melting stage.  If it takes longer than this, the beans are awfully old indeed and probably should be discarded.

The finished beans should be not at all soupy but rather napped in a velvety cooking liquid in the same way that grains of rice are napped with liquid in a well-made risotto.  Add salt only in the last hour or so of cooking.

Serve immediately.  Or, when the beans are done, you can, if you wish, turn them into fagioli all'uccelletto (recipe follows).
Sara's Potatoes with Garlic and Rosemary (patate saltate all'aglio e rosmarino)

4 to 6 servings

This is the dish my daughter turns to whenever she gets homesick for Tuscany--which she does almost any time she's not actually there.  It's probably the first thing she ever learned to cook on her own--one of those little nothing recipes that parents can use to encourage self-sufficiency in their offspring.

2 pounds waxy red-skinned potatoes
Salt to taste
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 or 4 cloves garlic, crushed with the flat blade of a knife
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Boil the potatoes in lightly salted water until they are tender enough just to be pierced with a sharp knife.  Remove from the heat and drain.  As soon as the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel them and slice about 1/4 inch thick.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat and add the sliced potatoes, garlic cloves, and the leaves stripped from the rosemary branches.  Turn frequently with a spatula to keep the starchy potatoes from sticking to the bottom of the pan.  (Once they start to brown this is less of a problem.)

Sprinkle the potatoes with salt and pepper and continue cooking, stirring and turning frequently, until they are thoroughly brown and tender.  Serve immediately.
Roasted Game Hens (pollastrini arrosti)

6 servings

Once some friends of mine, dining in a country trattoria, were served exquisite little game birds that had been roasted on a spit--the birds so small that a single plump olive had been tucked inside each tiny bird as a stuffing.  "Wonderful," they exclaimed to the proprietor, "but what are they?" "Pettirossi," he replied proudly, "robin red-breasts."

Now, the consumption of robins is as illegal in Italy as it is in America, but there's no getting around the Tuscan predilection for little birds.  I prefer to stay on the right side of the law and roast Cornish game hens.  They may lack that frisson of the forbidden that robins have, but I'd rather have the robins singing under my windows.

Spit-roasting small birds like game hens is tricky, so I do these in the oven instead.

1 thick slice pancetta or prosciutto
6 Rock Cornish game hens, each about 3/4 pound
6 fresh  sage leaves
6 bay leaves, preferably fresh
12 black olives (preferably small Gaeta or niçoise)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
6 thin slices pancetta or prosciutto

Preheat the oven to 400° F.

Cut the thick slice of pancetta or prosciutto in 6 equal portions.  Tuck a piece of pancetta inside each bird, along with a sage leaf, a bay leaf, and 2 of the olives, pitted if you prefer.  Sprinkle salt and pepper all over the outsides of the birds and rub into the skin, rubbing with some of the olive oil at the same time.  Wrap a thin slice of pancetta or prosciutto around each bird, stretching the meat to cover the bird well.  Set the birds in a baking dish in which they will all fit comfortably.

Roast for 15 minutes, then turn down the oven to 325°F.  and continue roasting 30 to 45 minutes longer, or until the birds are done and the juices run clear when the bird is pierced with a fork.

Serve immediately, with the pan juices as a sauce.
Tuscan Pot Roast (stracotto)

8 to 10 servings

With the exception of the glorious bistecca Chianina, Tuscans don't eat a lot of beef.  Once the T-bones have been removed from a Chianina carcass, however, something has to be done with the rest of the meat, and stracotto is one thing to do with it.  This kind of pot roast exists all over Italy, a real Sunday dish, elegant, flavorful, and practical for the cook, since the sauce for the pasta and the meat cook all at once and together.  Americans may find it odd to serve two courses with the same fundamental flavors, but to Italians it's perfectly normal.  What makes this particular treatment Tuscan is the presence of a robust Chianti wine in the sauce.  Any flavorful red wine with a good acidic balance will do.

3 1/2 pounds beef, such as top round, rolled and tied
3 or 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 medium carrots, scraped and thinly sliced
2 medium yellow onions, thinly sliced
1 thick stalk celery, thinly sliced
3 sprigs rosemary, le...