SOPRASSATA and GOTA LESSA

When planning a vacation, a trip or a week’s rest, why not consider an exotic and extravagant destination? Not Bangkok, Bali or Marrakech, but rather a cultural-gastronomic trip organized around the theme "pork around the world": a voyage around the world to the places most "devoted" to pigs: from Porchov to Porcheville, from the Bay of Pigs to the Island of Porco (near Caprera) touching down at Porcellino, Porcari and Porgellengo.
I discovered my delectation for pork quite suddenly a few years ago. During a trip in Tuscany a friend had me taste an enormous prosciutto ham that he had left to mature in cantina for 36 months: that pig has stayed immortal in my memory.
Of course it all depends on the abilities of that artist known as the norcino or pork butcher. In Colle di Val d’Elsa I discovered a very good one in Giovanni Gozzi, who caught my interest for two excellent sausages: the soprassata and the gota lessa or boiled pork cheek which many people think is an extinct item.
Giovanni produces them only in the period between September and March, following traditional ways. He puts a capacious pot of water over the fire and when it boils he puts in the pig’s head (having taken out the brains and scorched the hair) and cheeks. After a couple of hours the cheeks are ready to be drained while the head is cooked longer until the meat comes easily off the bones.
From the head he makes the soprassata, taking off the meat and cutting it up coarsely with a knife. He seasons it with salt, pepper and ground up garlic, coriander and cinnamon. The mixture is then poured into special linen or cotton sacks and then "soprassato" (pressed) until it gives off all the excess fat. It is hung in the cantina for a day before it is ready to be taken out of the sack and sliced.
Instead, once drained, the hot pork cheek is dressed with salt, pepper, ground garlic and nutmeg and is left to cool several hours before being eaten, as it is in this area, with table grapes and bread.
Nowadays Giovanni sighs with regret "No one today wants fat anymore" and he has been forced by his customers’ changed eating habits to substitute pork cheek with leaner bacon even if, in his cantina, the "real" boiled cheek is never missing.

| Montalcino | Colle di Val d'Elsa | Volterra | Casole d'Elsa | San Gimignano | Poggibonsi |

PECORINO SENESE And MARZOLINO

Here is an example of how one can successfully blend many ingredients: hygiene, quality, taste, aroma, tradition and creativity. As if they made up a great recipe, these elements are the secret to the cheese produced by the Caseificio Pinzani in Castelsangimignano which experiments with new solutions in the combining and blending of Tuscany’s great products. Here the milk of Apennine breeds of sheep is used to create great cheeses: some, like the pecorino senese and marzolino, come from ancient recipes; others, like the tartufello and pepato senese, have been invented by the expert cheese-makers. All, however, are made with that fresh milk which gives the cheese a perfume of pasture grass and all are worked by expert hands of craftsmen who first break up the whey and then fill and press every single mould.
Typical of Siena and the surrounding towns, pecorino senese is produced between November and June (although the best ones are made in springtime) from whole sheep’s milk, milk yeast, rennet and salt. It is left for over a hundred days to ripen on planks of fir wood and care is taken to turn the forms at least once a week. Its beautiful consistency is both compact and buttery, its color is somewhere between white and light yellow, while its sweet taste hides a light vein of spicy flavor.
During the Renaissance cacio marzolino was quite commonly found in Florence and all over the Sienese territories; so much so that it was considered, together with parmesan, Italy’s best cheese. Even Lorenzo the Magnificent and Pope Pius II were particularly fond of this cheese which takes its bizarre name from the best month for its production (March, in Italian marzo).
Marzolino is unmistakable for its appearance which is like a bread roll, a shape given it by expert hands (indeed the cheese-maker’s ability is equivalent to an artist’s!) that turn it on a table. After thirty days of aging, it is ready to be eaten as can be seen in its delicate, fragrant consistency and pure white color.
Inventiveness and creativity were used to invent tartufello, the pecorino senese that is aged from 20 days up to four months and made more precious by the small scales of Tuber aestivum Vitt: the tenuous perfume of this summer truffle blends perfectly with this kind of cheese. The pepato senese is aged for about twenty days and then its rind is covered with lots of black pepper, giving it taste that is sweet and hot at the same time.

 

 

 

 

 

| Montalcino | Colle di Val d'Elsa | Volterra | Casole d'Elsa | San Gimignano | Poggibonsi |