Well, it looks like everyone is finishing up picking the last of their olives - in fact last week I even got a taste of the some of the new oil from my area (the Florentine Hills) . . . a little piccante (Italian for a spicy kick) and with a rich olive perfume. Florentine Hills are a perfect place to begin exploring the flavours of olive oil in Tuscany and the delicious chianti.
This weekend I had friends over with the intent of "showing off" the oil - we started with fett'unta (the Florentine way of saying toasted bread with garlic, salt, pepper and of course extra virgin olive oil). Then I followed up with a classic Tuscan dish – Cavollo Nero (in English this would literally be Black Cabbage, characterized by its long, very wrinkly and kind of dark green leaves, best used after the first frost of the season which softens up these tough leaves). This veggie is boiled down – and then chopped up finely and spread on toasted bread. If you want to be truly traditional, you need to scrape a little garlic on the bread and then dunk rather quickly into the water left over from boiling this Tuscan treat and then spread the cavollo nero on the bread. Lavish on the olive oil and eat hot - - with a glass of red wine (of course). . . . sound strange and un-appetizing, well then try to imagine my mind when they tried to describe a favourite Tuscan desert for this time of year : Castagnaccio. The bare bones recipe is made with chestnut flour, water, fresh pressed extra virgin olive oil (thus why it was on my menu), pine, nuts, raisins, walnuts and fresh rosemary twigs. - - I couldn’t phantom a desert with rosemary! Yet it is definitely a treat to be tasted. Were my friends impressed, boh, don’t know but, I do know that we ate everything right down to the last drop of red wine.
Donna Scharnagl
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