MALLEGATO AND BURISTO

In my wanderings as a gastronaut in the beautiful area around Siena I discovered – through Franco Bruci, honorary butcher from Volterra – something that has allowed me to unveil a fake in Tuscan gastronomy. In fact most histories of Tuscan food, in discussing typical sausages, have always said more or less the same thing: "In farming culture pork butchery is carried out in a series of phases and mallegato, also known as buristo, is one of the first products to be eaten." This is all true except for the fact that mallegato and buristo are not the same thing.
Franco Bruci (it was he who unraveled the enigma for me) prepares them both in the period that goes from October to February and only once a week, the same day he himself butchers the few pigs that he buys directly from farmers in the area: the blood used must be of the utmost freshness.
Mallegato is made from pieces of lard cut into squares and dry pieces of Tuscan bread without crusts. These are covered with water and cooked for about an hour and a half. Then the dried and sieved pig blood is added together with raisins (some people also add pine nuts and a citron-fruit cut into small bits) salt, pepper and various spices and the mixture is stuffed into pork guts. Left to cook in plenty of salt water until it rises to the surface, the mallegato is then removed from the water and hung in the cantina to dry for a day. It is served cooked over the coals or on skewers or else cut into slices, dipped in flour and heated in a pan with oil or butter.
Instead buristo is made from the head and ribs of the pig. These are cooked and then ground up before adding filtered pork blood (a smaller amount than in mallegato) and sautéd lard bits. Dressed with salt and pepper, the buristo is first stuffed in guts and then cooked just like the mallegato. In Volterra there is a gastronomic tradition that does not allow any concessions to low-calorie diets and so buristo is eaten as it always has been, fried and served with eggs and bacon.

 

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

 

TARTUFO DI VOLTERRA

Around these parts they are classified in two categories. There are the despised "cicciai" who only do it for money: they move by night, leaving the car in one place and having a friend take them to another so that no one will discover their secret. Then there are the "sportivi", who do it for love and never leave home without a slab of bacon and the ever-present flask of wine.
These are the truffle hunters from Volterra who, from October to February, accompanied by their dogs (always mutts because mixed breeds have a greater sense of smell), go out in the woods and countryside looking for the precious white truffle of Volterra, the Tuber magnatum Pico. Tuber because the truffle is an underground fungus that has a tuberous form, magnatum because it is so precious as to be used only by the wealthy (the magnates) and Pico from the name of the doctor who first described and wrote about it in the eighteenth century.
The truffle can boast a host of more or less illustrious admirers ever since the times of Jacob the Patriarch; these include Plutarch, Cicero, Emperor Charles V, Napoleon, as well as Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, who used to present it to his counterparts in diplomacy to facilitate future collaborative relations.
The truffles that everyone covets are the ones that grow near what is called in this area the sanguinello: a plant with small, black berries whose truffle is easily recognized for the light red stripes of its pulp and for its intense and pleasing aroma. The form depends on the soil’s consistency: it is regular if it grows in crumbly earth or flat and irregular if it grows in very compact terrain. As precious and fleeting as all rare essences, it can only be kept several days in a cool place, wrapped in a cloth or slightly absorbent paper, or else with rice in a glass jar.
It is always eaten raw after having been cleaned by a loving brush under running water. Using a truffle cutter it is sliced into thin pieces over hot dishes such as pappardelle or used in the delicious truffle flan.