Eating in Italy - Tuscany and Umbria

Tuscany and Umbria are two regions centrally located in Italy.  These two regions have quite a lot in common; even when I asked my waiter one night what the difference was, he shrugged his shoulders, said they were a lot alike, and then with a wink said Tuscany was better (we were in Florence, which is in Tuscany).  While Tuscany gets a lot more attention, in the kitchen, there isn't much of a difference between the food eaten in these parts of the country.  This is olive oil and wine country.

As our group bused from location to location, our tour leader would fill us in on the foods we should try for each stop.  Understanding Italy's history was key to not only understanding the country, but also the prevalence of so many surviving Medieval towns, the attitudes, and the regional specialties of each place we visited.  Virginia explained that Italy was basically still a third world country up until the 1950's when they experienced what Italians consider an economic miracle which helped turn the country around.  Because of Italy's historic poverty (says Wikipedia, "The Renaissance was not a period of great social or economic change, only of cultural and ideological development. It only touched a small fraction of the population"), their relatively recent identity as an actual country (during most of the 1800's were revolutions and civil wars that ended around 1870), two world wars, and the fascists in there, their food was simple and an "eat everything" attitude lingers even still today. While in America we think of pizza and pasta as Italian food - and come on, they are - it's surprising how varied it actually is, even within the pasta category.  Bread, beans, soups with beans and bread (especially days-old bread) in them, stews, simple meat dishes, crostini (dried/toasted bread with toppings), tripe, fried brains, and farrow based dishes are common in both regions.  In these dishes, one can see the influence poverty had on the food Italians ate when they had to, but how it's carried over today now because they choose to.  I didn't eat all of these foods (TIME!), but here is what I did.
**I must note that I was lucky enough to try more food than I would have been able to otherwise because at every meal, the women I dined with were awesome about letting me try everything.  So while not every plate on here was my own, I did get to try all of these dishes, and some of them more than once ;)**

FLORENCE (Tuscany):

For appetizers, I had a pear and pecorino cheese salad.  Cathy ordered a mixed-crostini plate:  one had tomatoes, basil and mozarella, another white beans and spinach (my favorite), one with crushed black olives and olive oil and spices, and a fourth with a liver pate.

Ann's chicken cacciatore; Interesting side note: cacciatore means "hunter" in Italian, so if you see any dish  on a translated menu that says "hunter style", it means it is prepared in a tasty, stew-like way with onions, peppers, tomatoes, herbs, and sometimes wine

chicken milanesa...SOOOOO good!  I ate a good quarter of this dish.  No joke.   Luckily, Cathy was so full on  her appetizer that she was giving it away to me.

I ordered the pasta and rabbit stew, rabbit being a regional specialty and also something I'd never eaten before.  It was very simple, very good, and very comforting (it tasted a lot like chicken noodle soup without the soup part)

I walked past so many gooey looking pizzas in Florence.  I had to get one (it had been a few days anyway).  This was a four cheese pizza.  I'm not sure what all of the cheeses were, but it was good.  Another interesting note - pizzas are brought out to you uncut.  I watched Italians eating them and some just dove right in, with no rhyme or reason to their eating.  Others did the triangle thing.  Some ate with their hands, others forked and knifed it the whole way.  I tried all ways of eating my Italian pizzas. As they were so large, I usually skipped the crust to save room for all of the good cheesiness.  I tried to just dive in randomly, but usually found myself drifting back to the triangle cuts even though I ate it with utensils.  And that fruit platter back there?  Those grapes were the biggest grapes I have ever eaten in my life.  Like, it was best to cut them in half, they were so big.  Strawberries are in season, so there were cups of cut strawberries for sale at every fruit and snack and truck stop that I stopped at throughout the country.

Any guidebook will tell you that when in Florence, the souvenir you should be shopping for for yourself is leather, and they're right; it's everywhere.  But with all of that leather, what would you expect one must-have meal to be?  If you guessed steak, you're right.

Sirloin steak with grilled vegetables; On our last night in Florence, I went up to the tower to catch the views of the city  yet one more time, and Cathy and Melanie were up there chatting away with the owner of the hotel, Stefano.  We asked him where to go to get a good Florentine steak, and he said he would take care of it for us.  He called down to Nicolo working at the front desk and had a quick conversation which none of us understood, and said it was all taken care of and that we were going to Giovanni's.  I got nervous - this guy owns multiple hotels in Florence, so his budget and my budget are, I'm sure, very different.  When we went to get directions, Nicolo agreed that it was the best, and off we headed to have our steaks.  When you order a steak in Florence/Italy, they don't ask you how you want it cooked because they cook it the way they think it is best, Stefano informed us.  Knowing that, I ordered my sirloin, and the other ladies their filet minions.  My steak was great, and the price was no more than any of the other restaurants I had been to.   Done and done!

SAN GIMIGNANO (Tuscany):

Another Tuscan and Umbrian specialty is wild boar (who'da though?).  One way that it is prepared is in salami.  

Panforte, which is an Italian version of fruit cake.  But it has lots of almonds, which I love, and this kind was a chocolate version, which I also love.  It is sliced off of a huge round cake.  The two dense slices I ordered lasted me and Ann for a few days of pleasant snacking.

Following Cathy's lead, I went into a shop to order myself a boar-salami sandwich.  The woman is preparing it for me - just the roll, pecorino cheese, and salami.  I should have bought a round of that cheese to take home, but which kind?  The one covered in ash?  Crushed grapes?  Various spices?  But which spices, because there are five different spice-covered pecorinos?  Oh, and look at all the pastas on the other wall...wow, those are a lot of types of olive oils...hmmm, how do you pick a good balsamic?  Too many choices.  This lunch choice though was only 4 Euro.  It was the cheapest meal I had in all of Italy.

Just one of your local boar/salami/pasta/truffle/saffron/olive oil/vinagrette/wine shops

 ASSISI (Umbria):

After all the snacking and the sandwich in San Gimignano, I wanted simple food for dinner.  Pasta with tomatoes and fresh mozzarella did the trick quite nicely.  

After dinner, our little group walked.  We crossed over teh threshold of the cutest cookie bakery, which doubled as a gelateria.  I picked out a bunch of different cookies, but was too full from dinner.  So naturally I ate them for breakfast the next morning.  

Assisi is full of hills, some of them quite steep.  After hiking around and visiting  the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, I was hungry.  On a quiet street a few blocks away, I walked into a pizza by the slice place.  I had to pick this one, though I had no idea what was on it, because it looked so strange.  Turns out it is hot dog and potato slices.  Wow.  It was different.  No tomato sauce or anything.  The crust was good, the closest think to Pizza Hut's crispy, greasy pan crust that I had while there.  I didn't dislike it, but I don't need to eat it again either.  

About an hour later, I gave lunch a second try.  This is a pork (boar) sandwich on foccacia.  It was pretty good, especially the bread.  I was tricked into buying a balsamic glaze too (I thought she was asking me what I wanted on my sandwich, but when she started bringing out the truffle relish, I knew I was being worked over because those things aren't cheap!), and while it is delicious and I can't wait to open it up, the flavor of my sandwich had soured a little.  Dinner was a crappy pizza, but I knew it would be and knew I needed to watch the funds a little and so went the cheep route.  It wasn't worth a picture.  The chocolate chip gelato I had to make up for it, bought from the cookie shop, was worth a picture in taste.  Imagine it.

If you've hung on this long, you are either, bored, a foodie, or bored.  Thanks for playing.