Panzanella is a wonderful Tuscan salad dish that came to my rescue, in my quest to serve up tomatoes every day under a different guise. Essentially a bread salad bejewelled with diced red tomato, emerald green basil and pale jade cucumber, it comes from the frugal Tuscan heritage of cucina povera. Rural poverty meant that every last scrap of bread must be used up and other ingredients bulked out with it. Vegetable soups had stale bread in either toasted on top or soaking up the liquid, and this salad was a way of varying the staple sustenance of bread with some extra flavour. Nowadays we use a greater proportion of tomatoes and the bread is there to soak up the flavour and juices and add texture.
Panzanella Recipe or Tuscan Tomato and Bread Salad
Half a loaf of rustic white bread, a couple of days old
4 large ripe tomatoes
half a cucumber
half a red onion
several sprigs of fresh basil
a few tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt
Cut the crusts off the bread and break it into pieces. Soak in 2 cups of water for half an hour. Meanwhile chop the tomatoes roughly into cubes and put into a bowl with as much of their juice as you can rescue. Chop the cucumber also into cubes. Slice the red onion finely. Toss them all together with two tablespoons of the oil and season with salt, tear the basil leaves into the mix and leave for the flavours to develop.
Once the bread has soaked drain off the water and using your hands squeeze the bread to get the rest of the water out. Mix the squeezed crumbling cubes of bread into the tomato salad, so that it starts to soak up the juices. Taste for seasoning and add a dash of red wine vinegar if you like it.
You need to use a fairly coarse bread for this as your average sliced loaf will have dissolved into a mush long ago! This salad should be full of flavour, so if your tomatoes aren't fully ripe, compensate with extra basil and use a good vinegar and oil.
I had a rough formula for my picnics - an
outline of what I should provide each day to give plenty of scope for tasting the
local specialities, refuelling clients' energy levels on long walks and providing a gastronomic contrast to the
evening dinners.
Picnics were to be fresh and tasty, not too
heavy: 3 sorts of cheese; 3 varieties of sliced meats; 2 or 3 salads; bread;
fruit; a sweet treat of some sort; an unending supply of mineral water; light
red and white wine. So on a ten day trip I would have to find 30 different
cheeses and types of meat and 20-30 different salads, if I was going to wow the
clients at every picnic!
It was the salads that stretched my
ingenuity. Cold meats and cheeses Italy has
in endless variety, and everyone is happy for a repeat of a delicious Parma ham anyway.
But salads… this was the time to discover a book called '101 things to do with
a tomato'.
Tomatoes in Italy
already have an inbuilt wow factor for clients from grey Northern climes. Italy's
tomatoes ripen in the sun, grow bright and full of flavour and are delicious in
any form, even just sliced, sprinkled with peppery fresh basil and a drizzle of
olive oil. If I could just find different ways to serve them up every day, then
my limited repertoire of other salads, would just about stretch the length of
the trip.
Pienza is a modest one-street, hill-top village in Tuscany, that reveals an unexpectedly grand main piazza, lined with Renaissance palazzi bestowed on it by Pope Pius 2, way back in the mists of time, who wanted to raise his birthplace to a suitable grandeur befitting his status. The architecture of that time is perfectly preserved, the few modern buildings having been kept outside the walls of the village and further along the hill top.
These days Pienza is renowned for producing the best pecorino cheeses in Tuscany and a stroll up the cobbled main street will take you past several little bottegas selling nothing but pecorino cheese, stacked high on shelves at varying stages of maturity.
At our training, back in England, we had been impressed with the importance of providing local specialities for our picnics and dinners, when possible elaborating our description with any local legends, to give our clients a sense of the foods they were tasting and how they fit in to the overall picture and culture of the area.
I was feeling my way with this, but one story had been provided in our notes and Pienza was the place to use it.
A gourmet bishop had once been so delighted with a certain combination of flavours, he is said to have come up with this apocryphal couplet:
Al contadino non lo far sapere
Quant'e buono il cacio con le pere
Don't let the peasant know
How good the cheese is with pears
Now I'm sure that the wily peasant had been feasting on this fine combination for years and saying the same thing about the bishop, but you can't re-write quotes like these that are so encased in tradition!
So my picnic in Pienza was to be a pecorino tasting. The little cheese shops all sell three grades of pecorino di Pienza. I chose one shop at random and went in to the cool interior, pleasingly redolent of the cheese. I was offered a sliver of each cheese to taste. The fresh pecorino still soft and moist, a medium matured (about 3 months) pecorino was much firmer, but still had a mild creamy flavour, then the well matured cheese (about 6 months), which was much denser and crumblier and developing more of a tang. I bought a half of a fresh cheese and good-sized sections of the two others and they were carefully wrapped in waxed paper for me.
The rest of the shopping done, I took our lumbering minibus down the hill to the pretty little Pieve di Corsignano, a small romanesque church below the walls of the village. It was kept locked, but the heavy old key could be borrowed from the custodian, so that our clients could peek inside at the fading frescos. I hope by now it has been restored, but Italy is so full of charming churches like this one, all needing money for upkeep, that maybe it is still the same.
A handy olive tree made some shade for the picnic and the brown skinned pears contrasted beautifully with the pecorino cheeses, arranged on my flat fish-shaped baskets from Montalcino. The story went off OK, but as always with food it is the flavour that convinces, not the words. The proof is in the eating - the bishop was right, pecorino and pears go fantastically together - I hope the peasant got a look in after that gastronomic discovery!
I strode up the cobbles to walk through the imposing stone arch of the lower gate of Montepulciano. It was Monday morning, the group had set off on their walk, my minibus loaded to the roof with luggage and parked outside the gate. I had all morning to shop, drive to the picnic place and prepare lunch.
A breath of exhilaration filled me - I'm really here, working in Italy, walking the centuries old streets lined with medieval and Renaissance buildings. A glance skywards, returned me to earth, clouds were looming, please don't let it rain on my first picnic.
The fruttaverdura was putting out its display of fresh produce, colours gleaming brightly. The last of the winter blood oranges lingered alongside early strawberries. Newly plucked lettuces filled crates and the spring fennel, pale green and juicy called me over. I decided to go for a fennel and orange salad and a green salad.
Laden with two heavy bags of the freshest of local produce I followed my nose and the signora's directions to the Forno. It was one narrow doorway in a back street, but the smell of baking bread gave the game away. I crowded into the tiny shop already filled with several more signoras, who looked askance at this foreign girl in shorts, on a day when a thick cardigan and tights would be more prudent. I emerged with two huge loaves in brown paper bags, hot from the oven, clasped to my chest serving as central heating.
The rest of the shopping garnered from the supermarket, I climbed up into the bus, now filled with the smell of fresh bread, and checked my map and notes. As I headed out of the town, keeping eyes peeled for the turn onto the strada bianca, I scanned the horizon once more for a weather forecast. Slowly rumbling along the dust road, my appreciation of the wonderful views was marred by worries. Where was I to do the picnic if it rained?
Descending the steep hill from Montichiello I crossed the bridge and turned in to our picnic place - a grassy spot with two large oaks for shade, wild orchids beside a tiny stream and an open-sided barn in the next field. The barn was filled to the roof with bales of straw, which left the only alternative shelter - underneath the road bridge. It was less than picturesque, being a modern concrete construction, but there was an old wooden farm cart under it and if it rained it would at least keep us dry.
I set to transforming my minibus into my kitchen. Sitting chopping fennel in the open air had its charms once I'd adjusted to minimalist style of kitchen design. The two salads made, cheeses and hams arranged and enveloped in cling-film, fruit and bread arranged in baskets and all stowed on the minibus seats, I took another look at the sky. It was feeling damper all the time and the first specks of drizzle were falling.
The bridge then. Ferrying all the food and drinks there warmed me up and I managed to make the cart into a table. The bridge was a bit low, the tallest clients would have to bend their knees to avoid bumping their heads.
With the picnic laid out, I was pleased with the colour scheme: bright red blood orange arranged in a flower pattern contrasted with the pale fennel slices, fresh green salad, salami slices arranged with sun-dried and green olives, generous chunks of three different cheeses and a mound of glowing fruit. All I had to do now, was scan the hill for clients and tear off the covers as they approached. The drizzle was still not too heavy and they arrived in good spirits, gratifyingly pleased to see me, or rather the lunch.
Crowding under the bridge wasn't quite the relaxing picnic in the shade followed by siesta, as promised by the brochure, but the food disappeared rapidly, with appreciative comments and soon we were clearing up the detritus, throwing crumbs to the birds and piling oily plates into the van, so that I could race off to the hotel in Pienza and unload luggage into the rooms before they reached it on foot.
There we were in our hotel at the top of the town of Montepulciano, a town like most Tuscan towns built on and down the side of a steep hill, with twisting, cobbled streets laid out in medieval times, when town planning was an out-moded concept last used by the ancient Romans. Our restaurant was at the bottom of the town.
I blithely volunteered to lead the way and we set off into the dusky streets. I thought I knew the way, but it had been a week ago that I'd visited the restaurant to confirm the menu and the twists, turns and archways looked different, steeper and darker. Eventually after ten minutes of ever so casually chatting, trying to remember the name of that palazzo, the meaning of that Latin inscription, just why there are Etruscan tomb stones built into this palazzo, keeping eyes peeled for land marks as we went, the slope gentled, I recognised the restaurant ahead and ushered everyone in with relief.
Our trattoria was a small bustling family business, producing traditional Tuscan cooking in generous quantities. Our flame-haired waitress welcomed us in Montepulcianese dialect, cheerfully chatting away to all the clients, never mind that they understood not a word. As everyone settled into their places at the long table I took a deep breath for my next challenge - to present the menu.
We were going to have Tagliatelle al Ragu, fresh pasta ribbons with the rich Tuscan meat sauce, that includes chicken livers; Cannoli, their version of Cannelloni, stuffed with spinach and ricotta and baked with béchamel and ragu; Arrosto misto, a mixed selection of roasted guinea fowl, rabbit and lamb with a Sformato di Asparagi, an asparagus dish with egg and breadcrumbs baked in a mold, then salad; And Millefoglie to finish, a millefeuille of thin layers of pastry with a light custard in between. Carafes of the local Montepulciano red wine, stood at intervals down the table, non-vintage for this dinner, as we'd be tasting the stronger Vino Nobile di Montepulciano the next night.
I pinged my glass and stood up to give my introductory speech. Luckily the automatic pilot took over and trotted out my lines, and I hoped my descriptions of the food would turn out to be accurate, never having eaten here before. Then at last I was able to relax into enjoying the food, which was as new to me as to my clients. Nothing fancy, just simple ingredients carefully cooked, with plenty of flavour.
It all ran smoothly, the trattoria well used to feeding big parties and the food delicious, the clients relaxing into their holiday ready to be pleased and not minding that the Sformato turned out to be nothing like my initial description of it… delicious but different. To our amazement we got through the four courses without feeling over-extended.
We eased out of the restaurant and through the benevolent haze of good food and wine realised that the steep slopes we had tottered down, now had to be ascended to reach our beds. Gamely our clients straggled off up the hill, after all this was a walking holiday. As I brought up the rear I looked up the hill to see the confident avant-guard party taking a left turn rather than the steeper right hand street we'd come down. Too far ahead for me to call, I reflected that as long as they kept going up they'd get to the main piazza and find the hotel ..I hoped, and preserving a calm demeanour I escorted the slower ones up the precipitous cobbles. Needless to say the others were there before us despite having had a scenic tour of the town by night.
Two shiny new Mercedes minibuses parked in the car park at Pisa airport, two crisp new green t-shirts adorning two nervous new tour leaders, about to meet our first group of clients and whisk them off to their walking holiday in Southern Tuscany.
Unusually both of us were about to do our first trip for the company. More often, a new manager would be paired with an experienced leader to learn the ropes, but this year there were so many trips going and so many of us were new. I was paired with a leader of, what then seemed to me to be, the venerable age of forty. Despite her age it seemed that she was more nervous than I.
Maybe the optimism of youth gave me a confidence, but at twenty-three I had no doubts in my ability to do the job. I knew the way, had double checked the hotels, confirmed the menus, now I just had to overcome my shyness to deal confidently with the clients. Nevertheless before we welcomed the group we made a pact not to let on to the clients that neither of us had ever done this before.
Adrenaline rushed in to compensate for pre-trip nerves and I smiled and shook hands, then resolutely climbed into the driving seat. Any alarm that the mature clients may have felt about this fresh-faced girl bowling them down the Italian
autostrada, I hope was quickly allayed.
The three-hour journey to Montepulciano was accomplished in convoy at a respectable pace, with a pee-stop at a service station, and as we wound our way towards the town I rehearsed the route in my mind. As with all Italian hill towns it involved multiple hair-pin bends in low gear and many different possible junctions, some of which would lead you to a narrow archway impossible to traverse in a minibus.
Heart in my mouth, I led the way, thankful for the rehearsal the previous week, and apart from much revving of engines in low gear to make it round the steep hair pins with a full load of people and luggage, finally we were there, driving through an adequately wide stone archway at the top of the town, with Vera emerging into the narrow street outside the hotel to greet us.
A hustle bustle of unloading cases, allocating rooms, arranging a time to meet for dinner, driving the vans away to park them inoffensively in a car park outside the walls and then we fell into our cool, tiled, room, collapsing onto the immaculate beds in all our sweat and grime, with half an hour to shower and appear fresh and enthusiastic for dinner.
But we were there, in our hotel, in Tuscany, buses and clients unscathed!
Driving all night in the rugged Landrover, taking turns at the wheel with the boss, along the French Riviera and across the border, rumbling along roads and tunnels carved through the rocky cliffs, I finally arrived in a Tuscany as yet unknown to me.
I had spent my student year in Rome and most of my impressions of Italy were urban. Not the Roman ruins and cultural sights, not even the Vatican museum, though I had visited once in my time there, but markets and piazzas, the metro and buses, bars and bakeries, miniscule one-room apartments, fountains and dusty parks, were what I remembered.
In those days food hadn't been high on the agenda: vats of pasta cooked in a ramshackle flat; chips and mayonnaise in our favourite bar; panini filled with omelette; occasions when I'd gone to a trattoria in Trastevere with my Italian boyfriend and been regaled with some delicious fried morsels that my Italian hadn't been broad enough to identify, to be told later that they were brains, a Roman delicacy.
Now I was to be spending the next few months in the countryside of Tuscany and food was to be my profession. Ordering the menus for a gourmet walking holiday, picnic shopping for local specialities in the local food markets, I was going to have to learn my way around fast.
Before the first clients were to arrive though, we had a whirlwind learning tour of the Tuscan countryside. Meeting up with several more new tour leaders to walk the routes, drive to the picnic spots, learn the tortuous route through the medieval streets of Siena to our hotel in the centre, easing the minibus through the narrow skewed medieval archways in San Gimignano, without adding to its scrapes, the week flew by.
We all ate together in the evenings and so I was able to get a taste of Tuscan cooking. As different from Roman food as its countryside was from the bustle of the city, the wooded hills of Tuscany seemed to reflect in its cuisine. Seven of us around a long wooden table tucked into heaped platefuls of pappardelle al sugo di lepre, wide ribbons of fresh pasta tossed sparingly with a rich meat sauce of hare. It was delicious, the richness of the sauce just coating the tender pasta enough to flavour it, without weighing it down.
The spoils of the woods feature heavily on a Tuscan menu, whether it is the prized porcini mushrooms in autumn, or the hare, wild boar and venison once the hunting season opens. A veteran tour leader with us gave an animated demonstration of how not to introduce a meal to our clients, "So for our first course we're having Bambi pasta and then, Thumper stew for our main course." We laughed but added the underlying advice to the huge quantity of other information we were storing. Be gentle with the susceptibilities of your less robust clients, as there are some who however much inclined to be gourmet, find the memory of a pet rabbit or a Disney movie intruding upon the pleasures of a Tuscan table.
Those few days in Provence went by in a blur of
amphitheatres, Roman bridges and aqueducts, maps and rocky hillsides. I was
there to drive the vehicle, while the others were learning their walking routes
with the boss.
The first day they strode away together up a stony path
leaving me with a map reference to meet them at several hours later, a handful of francs and a vague
suggestion that it would be nice if I provided lunch. I
took this as a test of my food providing mettle. I had no picnic equipment and
very little knowledge of French food but was determined to prove myself.
I'd like to say that I parked in a small nearby town and
browsed a local food market coming away with a newfound knowledge of the food
specialities of the region and some delicious local delicacies, having made firm friends
with all the stallholders.
What really happened was that, nervous of losing my way in
narrow streets with the unfamiliar Landrover, that I was now driving, and wary
of taking too much time shopping and being late at the rendez-vous (the worst
possible crime when there are hungry walkers in the picture), I dived
thankfully into the first hypermarché on the outskirts of the town and wandered
the aisles in a quandary about what to provide for four people, who included the
boss.
Luckily there was an excellent gourmet deli counter, with
plenty of fresh meats and patés, cheeses and olives. My French was good enough
to make myself understood, but my lack of experience in buying food in 100g
quantities left me vastly over-catering on some fronts and having to cut back
on the cheese to compensate. A few baguettes and some beautifully ripe early
strawberries completed my haul and I climbed back into the rugged Landrover for
the next part of my challenge.
The map spread out on the passenger seat, I slowly drove out
of town scanning for the small side road that I needed. I had to get this
right. If I didn't find the right place and left the boss stranded on a hot
hillside, hungry and transportless, I'd be heading straight back to the cross
channel ferry.
The Landrover rumbled agreeably up the steep track and,
despite the adrenalin turning my stomach to a tense knot, I was sure I was in
the right place. Bright sun, no shade but views for miles and the incomparable
herby scent of Provence. Quiet too, once I'd switched off the growling, diesel
engine. I let myself relax a bit and enjoy the fact that I was here, far from
the tube, temping and grey city streets of London.
My first ever, professional picnic, was a rather makeshift
affair. I improvised a tablecloth from my pink cotton jacket spread on a rock
and, once I saw everyone coming up the hill towards me, laid out the fruits of my hypermarché shop, carefully using their wrappings folded under as plates. A few
flowers grabbed at the last minute to decorate the array of delicacies and I
thought I had acquitted myself quite well.
They arrived, gulped down water and the boss cast his eyes
over my attempt at a picnic. The pink jacket suddenly looked rather
inappropriate as a tablecloth. He eyed the imposing heap of rillettes
that I had chosen as looking suitably local and rustic. "Not everyone
likes rillettes you know" was the only comment.
Slightly deflated, but cheered by the fact that everyone
else was tucking in, I sampled my picnic food. The baguette was fresh and
crusty …I should have bought more, the rillettes
were alright but the salty, rough pate lubricated with plenty of fat, should
have been just a taster not the whole meal. Maybe next time I'd even brave the
food market.
All too soon the meal was over, and I was dusting the crumbs
off my pink jacket. Without any shade to relax in we piled back into the
Landrover to head off to the next stage of the walk. My map reading skills at least had
passed the test. I was on my way.
It all started with a Mercedes minibus and a cross channel
ferry. Four enthusiastic new tour leaders for a walking holiday company,
entrusted with ferrying out the brand new bus, left the grey, late-April
English shores to speed down the autoroute through the night and emerge in the
scented hills of Provence. Bright glaring sunshine, thyme and wild herbs in the
air, dry rocky mountains heralded a new life, a new adventure. I was destined
for Italy. This taste of Provence was just a step on my way to provide picnics
for hungry walking clients in Tuscany.
Before we launched in to explore the food markets of Aix
however, we had a responsibility to our vehicle. Brand new, its running-in
schedule already demanded an oil change, so we dived into the back streets to
find the local Mercedes rep garage.
The levels of interest among the mechanics rocketed as four
young women of varying blondeness and obvious foreignness drove the large white van into
the forecourt and they enthusiastically waved us up a steep ramp into the
garage itself. It seemed like quite a low entry. We looked at each other. Whose
turn was it? I'd driven the bus onto the ferry, so I'd faced my driving
challenge. My older colleague volunteered and carefully revved the bus for the
steep ascent. We released our breath as the van nosed cautiously under the
roof, only to cringe as the back caught up with the front, levelled out and the pristine minibus roof jammed against the garage archway.
Aghast we looked at each other. The mechanics, who had been
looking at blondes rather than buses suddenly kicked into action. They leapt
into the back of the van to weigh it down and with an ear-splitting crunch the
van separated itself from the masonry and reversed out, a pale-faced tour leader at the
wheel.
The mechanics did a lightning oil change for us outside and
we retreated to find strong coffee and several pains au chocolat to calm our
nerves, before meeting up with our new boss. Over our first real taste of
France, the flaky buttery pastry with its core of dark chocolate soothing our
frazzled tempers and the excellent coffee reviving us after our all night
drive, we agreed that it was only the roof that was dented and nobody would
ever see it, so perhaps it wasn't too dreadful. That minibus has probably
retired from service long since, but for years it carried its secret scars
merrily around France and Italy, with just the four of us knowing the story of
its wounds.
