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ITALIAN: Tuscan Pantry: Essentials




Source of Recipe


By Sharon Bowers


List of Ingredients




Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
Taste before you buy. Get a good extra-virgin for raw use, and a cheaper (but still extra-virgin) one for cooking.

Parmesan Cheese
Never buy the processed kind in a can. Parmigiano-Reggiano, the best, is not from Tuscany, but it's used all over Italy and is truly the king of Parmesan cheeses. Pecorino Toscano is similar, but hard to find in the US--you'll probably find a Pecorino Sardo. Stay away from Pecorino Romano, which is too sharp for Tuscan cooking.

Beans
Cannellini are common and suitable for most recipes. They're sold in the U.S. as white kidney beans. Canned are OK, but if you're making a dish in which the beans shine, start with dried and cook them yourself.

Herbs
Odori means "aromatics" more than "herbs," but some of the best aromas come from fresh herbs. Dried basil, mint, and parsley are not reasonable substitutes for fresh, though you can get good flavor from dried sage or rosemary, both of which are important in Tuscan food. Buy fresh whenever possible.

Tomatoes
Home-grown plum tomatoes would be ideal, but most of us aren't so lucky. For sauces, buy canned plum tomatoes, preferably not "Italian-style," which masks the tomatoes' flavor with herbs. Taste and see what brands you like. For fresh tomatoes, use only perfectly ripe summer ones--or make another dish.

Anchovies
You may think you don't like their fishiness, but cooked into foods, the fish disappears, leaving a rich, salty complexity of flavor. Tuscans prefer whole salted anchovies, rinsed before use. Oil-packed are a reasonable substitute.

Meats
Fresh meats are not exported from Italy. You can buy real Italian prosciutto and dried sausages such as sopressata salami, but for such fresh meats as pancetta (an unsmoked Italian bacon), find a locally made version from an Italian shop or use slab bacon or salt pork.

Vegetables
In the U.S. we can't get the tiny, tender Tuscan artichokes (carciofi) or wild Tuscan greens, and our fava beans are rarely so tender that we can eat them raw. What we can do to approximate Italian vegetable cooking, though, is buy the freshest and best vegetables, especially from area farmers at greenmarkets.

Polenta
Buy fresh stoneground cornmeal and keep it in the refrigerator. Cornmeal can go stale quickly, so don't bother with Italian imports. For the best flavor, try organic cornmeal.

Recipe